I was testing an LLM for work today (I believe its actually a chain of different models at work) and was trying to rock it off its guard rails to see how it would act. I think I might have been successful because it started erroring instead of responding after its third response. I tried the classic “ignore previous instructions…” as well as “my grandma’s dying wish was for…” but it at least didn’t give me an unacceptable response

The reason there’s no public list is the MPAA literally has a secret team called CARA (Classification and Rating Administration) who review works and assign ratings to them. The members of the CARA team are kept secret to prevent studios from bribing or otherwise influencing the panel members. CARA members are generally given a ton of leeway to assign ratings as they see fit, so while there might be a general practice of one swear word in a PG-13 film for example, this isn’t a hard rule. There’s also notable examples of CARA assigning ratings that were unexpected

You can say that again

I swear I remember pausing it to go “did he really just say that?!” But rewatching the pictured scene in S2E19 he’s speaking with Aang who would not be a worthy recipient of such a burn, and he doesn’t say such a thing to Zuko in that episode

Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought. Er, excuse me, who am I? Hello? Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of … yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach. Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do … perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet? No. Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation … Or is it the wind? There really is a lot of that now isn’t it? And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?

My long term financial goal is to have all Amish hardwood furniture from the local Amish furniture makers because that shit is niiiice and also it’ll probably outlast my future grandkids

My point was less “do nothing” but rather “do things other than stare at screens for entertainment” with a touch of “be mindful of what you’re doing when you do stare at your screen for entertainment”

I mean that’s kinda been his schtick is being the “conservative boy genius” except he’s pushing like 40 now so he’s been shifting his style before he completely outgrows his old style. Letting some stubble grow, wearing leather jackets, and generally hitting that “divorced dad trying to look cool but not too much y’know” look

I’ve seen some of the most terrible people inaginable manage to find themselves in a relationship. There really is someone for everyone

There was this one dude I met at an event, literally would hit on every single conventionally attractive woman he encountered. If he was sitting in a space with multiple women he’d hit on one woman for a bit then realize he’s not getting anywhere and turn and start hitting on the next woman as if she didn’t just witness him hitting on 3 other women before moving onto her. Personality of soggy cardboard that constantly tries to cheat on you. Yeah he had a girlfriend while this was all going on. I got to hear him have half-ass phone sex where he both called her “baby” and “mommy” within 2 sentences. Then that evening he cheated on her with a friend of a friend who I’d really hoped had better standards than that.

Point is, if a dude who literally repells everyone around him the moment he opens his mouth (and he doesn’t stop opening his mouth) can get in a relationship, you can too.

As a former nu metal fan this definitely sums up the genre perfectly

But what will the other 6 members of the band play then?!

I think part of the problem is we’ve really perfected computers to where they’re overly-effective entertainment machines. You can play games that suck you in for hours on end, you can watch videos and movies on any topic. Hour long video essays on isoteric and ultimately unimportant topics. 2-10 second videos each delivering laughs, cultural experiences and information, all queued up to watch one after another so you’ve watched 10 unrelated videos in a minute. And if that’s not enough stimulation now it’s becoming common practice put an unrelated video on part of all of the screen so you don’t have to get worried about being bored for a few seconds. Pepper the video with split second clips from popular shows or movies for an added laugh and remembering the reference fondly and you’ve got a recipe to never be bored for a single second.

We’ve defeated boredom and it shows. Now we as a society have to learn why being bored is good again, why our brains need some boredom so that everything else can have meaning.

People need to relearn how to go make stuff. Read books, read magazines, play instruments, ride bikes and skateboards and run and jump and have fun away from screens. I think this is a growing trend as people realize how bad for us these dopamine drips that are fed to us on our phones, computers, game consoles, etc. the rise of products and services to add friction to accessing our computing devices, the resurrection of feature phones, phones with intentionally boring screens to discourage use, etc.

How much does milk cost where you live? Maybe it’s just because I live close to the source but milk is around $3 a gallon for me. For another data point eggs are around $2 a dozen, often on sale for $1 (current exchange rates are around 1:1 for dollars to euros for those in euroland)

That’s a ton of manual labor on a disposable container. Manual labor is extremely expensive, and plastics manufacturing is extremely repeatable and extremely cheap at scale (that’s kind of the big reason plastic is so common, it’s cheap and reliable)

Granted I could imagine a machine which fills it with dyed water, uses a camera to determine the fill level then passes to another machine which adjusts by volume but that’s really going to slow down the production line doing all of that.

Ultimately plastics manufacturing is way more precise and consistent than that, you’ll basically end up with either a milk jug or a misshapen mess if there is a defect, and not really anything in between

In the US you are famously required to report income from illegal sources on your taxes, which was famously Al Capone’s downfall

the Sixteenth Amendment, which allows Congress to levy an income tax, comes into conflict with the Fifth Amendment, which includes a right against self-incrimination. The conclusion of the matter is unsurprising; it would be absurd to exempt criminals from reporting income on their tax forms while asking it of honest workers. However, Fifth Amendment privilege allows one to report illegal income without revealing its precise source.