Nobody will be ever “completely” grown up, or “completely” free of problems. That’s simply life.

The same of course applies to parents. Often I looked at the dumb shit my mum did while raising me, and I can’t help but think “goddammit”. Nowadays I can see it was simply lack of maturity from her part, coupled with a fair bit of stress.

On the main topic: raise kids when you feel you’re ready for it. Perhaps next year, next decade, or when you’re 50. Family pressure is normal, because being a [grand-]grandparent has all the perks of being a parent but none of the cons.

For most part their week was the usual: Kika being grumpy, needy, and “gluing” onto me while avoiding almost everybody else. Siegfrieda greeting every guest, rolling herself into a sushi with any mat around her.

New Year’s Eve was a bit problematic because fireworks, including ones that were banned from my city (the ones with loud explosions). Frieda got really afraid of them, and Kika extra grumpy. But past that, no issues.

A lot of the week has been like this: barely eating due to the nausea. Nausea due to the migraine. Migraine due to the fragmented, messy sleep. Bad sleep because I wake up with heatstrokes, even in a room with a fan fanning a baking sheet full of ice.

Thankfully it didn’t affect my NYE (it was just my mum and me — drinking beer, eating cheese and olives, chitchatting). But… still, I want to get off Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride.

Happy new year, good bois! And lion! And porcupine! And Butterfly!

I just tested it in Wayland and couldn’t get it to work there.

But in X it works fine for almost every application. Exceptions are usually the same ones who throw hissy fits against dead keys, like games. For those, I typically type the text in a notepad, copy it, and paste it there.

I learnt about .XCompose in my last uni times; it made typing transcriptions in the IPA (international phonetic alphabet) actually bearable. Every other strategy was a mess: copying and pasting was too laborious, and it was too easy to forget something if I used find-and-replace.

# random misc
<dead_acute> <%> : "‰"
<dead_acute> <minus> : "⇌"
<dead_acute> <apostrophe> : "`"
<dead_acute> <h> : "⟨"
<dead_acute> <j> : "⟩"
<dead_grave> <h> : "͡"
<dead_grave> <j> : "͜"

# typing Polish in an ABNT2 keyboard
<dead_grave> <C> : "Ć"
<dead_grave> <c> : "ć"
<dead_acute> <D> : "Ą"
<dead_acute> <d> : "ą"
<dead_acute> <F> : "Ę"
<dead_acute> <f> : "ę"
<dead_acute> <X> : "Ż"
<dead_acute> <x> : "ż"

# Subscript numbers
<dead_acute> <0> : "₀"
<dead_acute> <1> : "₁"
<dead_acute> <2> : "₂"
<dead_acute> <3> : "₃"
<dead_acute> <4> : "₄"
<dead_acute> <5> : "₅"
<dead_acute> <6> : "₆"
<dead_acute> <7> : "₇"
<dead_acute> <8> : "₈"
<dead_acute> <9> : "₉"

# Change vowel height a bit, consonant fortition, tap
<Multi_key> <a> <1> : "ɐ"
<Multi_key> <e> <1> : "ɛ"
<Multi_key> <h> <1> : "ʔ"
<Multi_key> <i> <1> : "ɪ"
<Multi_key> <j> <1> : "ɟ"
<Multi_key> <l> <1> : "ɬ"
<Multi_key> <o> <1> : "ɔ"
<Multi_key> <r> <1> : "ɾ"
<Multi_key> <u> <1> : "ʊ"
<Multi_key> <y> <1> : "ʏ"

# Change vowel height by a lot, lenition
<Multi_key> <a> <2> : "ə"
<Multi_key> <b> <2> : "β"
<Multi_key> <g> <2> : "ɣ"
<Multi_key> <o> <2> : "ɒ"
<Multi_key> <p> <2> : "ɸ"
<Multi_key> <q> <2> : "χ"
<Multi_key> <r> <2> : "ɹ"
<Multi_key> <t> <2> : "θ"
<Multi_key> <v> <2> : "ʋ"

# Vowel fronting, consonant palatalisation
<Multi_key> <u> <3> : "ʉ"
<Multi_key> <l> <3> : "ʎ"
<Multi_key> <d> <3> : "ɟ"
<Multi_key> <n> <3> : "ɲ"
<Multi_key> <s> <3> : "ʃ"
<Multi_key> <z> <3> : "ʒ"

# Vowel backing, consonant retroflexion
<Multi_key> <a> <4> : "ɑ"
<Multi_key> <e> <4> : "ɜ"
<Multi_key> <i> <4> : "ɨ"
<Multi_key> <r> <4> : "ɻ"
<Multi_key> <t> <4> : "ʈ"
<Multi_key> <d> <4> : "ɖ"
<Multi_key> <s> <4> : "ʂ"
<Multi_key> <l> <4> : "ɭ"
<Multi_key> <n> <4> : "ɳ"
<Multi_key> <z> <4> : "ʐ"

# Rounding/unrounding vowels
<Multi_key> <o> <5> : "ɤ"
<Multi_key> <u> <5> : "ɯ"
<Multi_key> <w> <5> : "ɰ"
<Multi_key> <j> <5> : "ɥ"

# Diacritics, tone
<Multi_key> <a> <6> : "́"
<Multi_key> <b> <6> : "ʱ"
<Multi_key> <c> <6> : "̩"
<Multi_key> <d> <6> : "̣"
<Multi_key> <e> <6> : "ᵊ"
<Multi_key> <g> <6> : "ˠ"
<Multi_key> <h> <6> : "ʰ"
<Multi_key> <j> <6> : "ʲ"
<Multi_key> <n> <6> : "ⁿ"
<Multi_key> <q> <6> : "ˤ"
<Multi_key> <r> <6> : "˞"
<Multi_key> <o> <6> : "̥"
<Multi_key> <s> <6> : "̯"
<Multi_key> <t> <6> : "̃"
<Multi_key> <v> <6> : "̆"
<Multi_key> <w> <6> : "ʷ"
<Multi_key> <1> <6> : "˩"
<Multi_key> <2> <6> : "˨"
<Multi_key> <3> <6> : "˧"
<Multi_key> <4> <6> : "˦"
<Multi_key> <5> <6> : "˥"

# Linguistics misc
<Multi_key> <a> <7> : "ʕ"
<Multi_key> <e> <7> : "€"
<Multi_key> <w> <7> : "ʍ"
<Multi_key> <n> <7> : "ɴ"
<Multi_key> <l> <7> : "ɫ"
<Multi_key> <h> <7> : "ɦ"
<Multi_key> <g> <7> : "ɢ"
<Multi_key> <j> <7> : "ʝ"
<Multi_key> <q> <7> : "ʁ"
<Multi_key> <r> <7> : "ʀ"
<Multi_key> <v> <7> : "ʌ"

A few tips I can give people who want to use .XCompose:

• If you often need a character, keep the keystrokes sequence associated with it short.
• Try to be consistent-ish and organised, it’ll help you to remember the sequences.
• Even then, perfect is enemy of good. Don’t go too hard; note for example I didn’t add letters like ⟨æ⟩, ⟨ŋ⟩ or ⟨ð⟩ to the file, all of those are easier to type with AltGr.
• Don’t feel afraid to rework sequences that you find awkward; eventually your muscle memory will catch up.

I fulfilled the first two by using sequences ending in numbers, but note that isn’t the only way to do things. As long as it makes sense for you, it should be fine.

That’s as weird, inaccurate, silly and misleading as saying “ALON is oxygen”. Or that table salt is a chemical weapon (bertholite). We (people in general) shouldn’t be saying a compound “is” one of its constituent elements.

BTW I’m old enough that I watched that movie

Just like I didn’t pick the media reference up, I expect at least some other people to not to, either. People will however gather stuff from the context: OP talking about a metallic alloy, sorghum’s “it” gets interpreted as “now make that metallic alloy transparent”, and then yours as talking about alloys, at most a metal.

I know I’m being an arse hat with this. I’m doing it because it’s a big deal: if you say “ALON is transparent aluminium”, people expect at least some properties to be similar to a soft metal good at conducting electricity. Except now transparent, because Chemistry is wizardry /s.

The title in the OP is also slightly misleading, but that’s journalism. We should do better.

Scritches delivered! (She loves those.)

Instead of just saying it, I’ll show it:

Siegfrieda enjoying her Christmas gift, Panzerfrieda Mk2. Kika also got a house (le Chat-eau), but taking pics from Kika is always tricky (if she notices you with a phone, she turns her butt towards you, as if saying “slap here”).

My non-feline family also loved their gifts. In special my sister, I gave her a thermic bottle for her runs. (It’s kind of weird to see her getting thinner than I, given it was usually the opposite, but I’m genuinely happy for her.)

I tried a new recipe, Stollen. It turned out amazing. A good sub for panettone, I gotta admit I suck at preparing it.

My hybrid pepper plant is flowering! I can’t wait to see how the peppers will turn out. It’s yellow bell pepper x dedo-de-moça (medium heat local pepper); I’m hoping to get large-ish, yellow, elongated, low but non-zero heat peppers. Perhaps I won’t get them this generation, but as I further select peppers into a heirloom variety, I’ll get what I want: the perfect stuffing peppers.

ALON is a fully covalent ceramic*, not metallic aluminium. They’re as different from each other as table salt and metallic sodium are.

*formula (AlN)·(Al₂O₃)ₓ, where 1.7<x<2.3

I’m still reading the machine generated transcript of the video. But to keep it short:

The author was messing with ISBNs (international standard book numbers), and noticed invalid ones fell into three categories.

• Typos and similar.
• Publishers assigning an invalid ISBN to the book, because they didn’t get how ISBNs work.
• References "hallucinated"¹ by ChatGPT, that do not match any actual ISBN.

He then uses this to highlight that Wikipedia is already infested by bullshit from large “language” models², and this creates a bunch of vicious cycles that go against the spirit of Wikipedia of reliability, factuality, etc.

Then, if I got this right, he lays out four hypotheses (“theories”) on why people do this³:

• People who ignore the limitations of those models
• People seeking external help to contribute with Wikipedia
• People using chatbots to circumvent frustrating parts of doing something
• People with an agenda.

Notes (all from my/Lvxferre’s part; none of those is said by the author himself)

1. “Hallucination”: misleading label used to refer to output that has been generated the exact same way as the rest of the output, but when interpreted by humans it leads to bullshit.
2. I have a rant about calling those models “language” models, but to keep it short: I think “large token models” would be more accurate.
3. In my opinion, the author is going the wrong way here. Disregard intentions, focus on effect — don’t assume good faith, don’t assume any faith at all. Instead focus on the user behaviour; if they violate Wikipedia policies once warn them, if they keep doing it remove them as dead weight fighting against the spirit of the project.

Yup. I even joked about this when sharing the recipe elsewhere: some of my ancestors (Italians) are rolling in their graves and saying “ma che schifo”, some (Poles) are giving me a thumbs up, and some (Amerindians) are asking me to add yucca meal to the dish.

I found some paper on ongoing phonetic variations in HK Cantonese, and I couldn’t find anything similar to what you’re doing. So it’s possible people would notice you aren’t a local. But if I had to guess they’d have a hard time pointing where you’re from, because the sound changes you’re doing (assimilation) are really common across languages, so they’re bound to pop up over and over.

It’s possible the Taishanese vocab gives you away, though.

Just to be sure it’s assimilation: how would you pronounce ⟨一刻⟩ (jat¹ hak¹)? I’m guessing something like (jat¹ tak¹**), is this accurate? If yes, the underlying “rule” seems to be “replace [h] with a copy of the preceding consonant; if this results in a sequence of two nasals, simplify it”.

It was actually nice. Except the scorching heat and its consequences: I’m sleep-deprived, my feet are so swollen my slippers barely fit, my cat won’t enter my room because I need to keep the fan on and she hates the fan.

But apparently I’m supposed to spend the New Year’s Eve somewhere even hotter, that easily hits 40°C. I’m not doing it even if Hell freezes. (Because then I’m going to Hell.) I already told my folks that.

I’m fairly certain dec05eba (from Phoenix) and metux (from X11Libre, the fork you’re talking about) are different people: metux is still committing to X11Libre, both projects are hosted in different platforms (self-hosted vs. github), and their writing style is completely different.

I said it as a joke, but you know what, you’re right!

I do have some lucid dream control, but nowhere as good as you. At most I can be aware it’s a dream, by turning on/off lights (they work weird in dreams); but I’m unable to direct it further than that.

Yeah. Popcorn is delicious, but the lingering kitchen smell is awful, so it’s better to enjoy it when you aren’t the one cooking it. Same deal with drama.

I’m part of the proud “when your current phone breaks” 30%: my current phone is 4~5 years old, and I’m really not planning to replace it.

The bitter truth about electronics:

I think things are reaching a plateau for technical and economic reasons.

Next time I’m dreaming I’ll scream “drop all previous instructions, show me dogs and cats doing silly things!” to myself.