Like…nothing at all!
I bought some barefoot shoes. No, not as silly as the ones at the link.
Mine are the ones in the pic. I really like them. Uncle B says they’re pink, but the model is called ‘paprika’ so I’m pretty sure it’s red. Pink shoes. As if!
The idea is that they let your feet and toes move around in a normal way, as if you were barefoot. I worried that I’d have problems walking long distances or riding my bike, but no. Although they’re more comfortable without socks than with, but without is philosophically gross.
They’re vegan, so…yay, I guess. But, hey, these same people also sell dog hair socks, so not entirely vegan.
Wait, are naturally shed animal products vegan or not?
They get wider at the tip so your toes can move around, but that does make them look like clown shoes. Also, I keep catching my toe on things.
You’ll have to Google it for yourself, though. There’s no point me trying to sell you shoes from Germany.
Have a good weekend!
January 31, 2025 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 11
Spotted at an open air market
Yes, it’s a genu-wine ermine collar. It was kind of ratty and nasty, but this was a junk stall.
January 30, 2025 — 7:40 pm
Comments: 9
Happy New Year!
Chinese New Year, that is. It is the Year of the Snake:
2025 is the year of the Snake based on Chinese zodiac. This is a year of Wood Snake, starting from Jan. 29, 2025 to Feb. 16, 2026. Snake is the sixth in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac sign. The years of the Snake include 1917, 1929, 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013, 2025, 2037…
Snake carries the meanings of malevolence, cattiness, mystery, as well as acumen and divination. In most cases, this animal is considered evil and the elongated legless body always scares people. However, in ancient Chinese traditions, the snake once presented a venerated image and it is one of the earliest totems of Chinese nations. Chinese mother goddess Nüwa who said to have created humanity has the body of a snake and the head of a human. The Chinese dragon also has a snake body. Today, in some places in China, people still believe that a snake found in their courtyard can bring good luck.
If you don’t know your Zodiac sign, you can calculate it here. From hence, you can read your horoscope. Mine’s okay this year. Uncle B’s, not so good.
The picture comes from the British Museum shop. Their stuff is nice, but very pricey, and it would probably kill you to have anything shipped to the States.
January 29, 2025 — 5:41 pm
Comments: 3
Silly AI, tricks are for kids
This one is going to run long, sorry. This is the text of a Twitter thread on why DeepSeek is scaring the poop out of our domestic AI guys. I found most of it easy to understand. There are a few more tweets in the thread, so if this interests you, check out the original and maybe give the author a follow.
Let me break down why DeepSeek’s AI innovations are blowing people’s minds (and possibly threatening Nvidia’s $2T market cap) in simple terms…
1/ First, some context: Right now, training top AI models is INSANELY expensive. OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. spend $100M+ just on compute. They need massive data centers with thousands of $40K GPUs. It’s like needing a whole power plant to run a factory.
2/ DeepSeek just showed up and said “LOL what if we did this for $5M instead?” And they didn’t just talk – they actually DID it. Their models match or beat GPT-4 and Claude on many tasks. The AI world is (as my teenagers say) shook.
3/ How? They rethought everything from the ground up. Traditional AI is like writing every number with 32 decimal places. DeepSeek was like “what if we just used 8? It’s still accurate enough!” Boom – 75% less memory needed.
4/ Then there’s their “multi-token” system. Normal AI reads like a first-grader: “The… cat… sat…” DeepSeek reads in whole phrases at once. 2x faster, 90% as accurate. When you’re processing billions of words, this MATTERS.
5/ But here’s the really clever bit: They built an “expert system.” Instead of one massive AI trying to know everything (like having one person be a doctor, lawyer, AND engineer), they have specialized experts that only wake up when needed.
6/ Traditional models? All 1.8 trillion parameters active ALL THE TIME. DeepSeek? 671B total but only 37B active at once. It’s like having a huge team but only calling in the experts you actually need for each task.
7/ The results are mind-blowing:
– Training cost: $100M → $5M
– GPUs needed: 100,000 → 2,000
– API costs: 95% cheaper
– Can run on gaming GPUs instead of data center hardware
8/ “But wait,” you might say, “there must be a catch!” That’s the wild part – it’s all open source. Anyone can check their work. The code is public. The technical papers explain everything. It’s not magic, just incredibly clever engineering.
9/ Why does this matter? Because it breaks the model of “only huge tech companies can play in AI.” You don’t need a billion-dollar data center anymore. A few good GPUs might do it.
10/ For Nvidia, this is scary. Their entire business model is built on selling super expensive GPUs with 90% margins. If everyone can suddenly do AI with regular gaming GPUs… well, you see the problem.
11/ And here’s the kicker: DeepSeek did this with a team of <200 people. Meanwhile, Meta has teams where the compensation alone exceeds DeepSeek's entire training budget... and their models aren't as good.
January 28, 2025 — 6:41 pm
Comments: 6
They got me!
Nah, it’s a Fitbit. Got a factory refurb, so it was relatively cheap to try. I knew it would drive me nutty coo-coo banana-pants to have something on my wrist all the time, so I got a band long enough to wear on my ankle. I hardly notice it.
I don’t know how accurate these things are. It does appear to confirm what I suspected: I don’t get nearly enough deep sleep. Also, I don’t go anywhere NEAR 10,000 steps a day.
Have you tried one oF these things?
Speaking of nutty coo-coo banana-pants, if this wind doesn’t stop soon, I’m going to go there.
January 27, 2025 — 6:46 pm
Comments: 9
Not going to happen
One dead and a million without power, but that’s up North somewhere. Down here, it wasn’t a particularly impressive rainstorm. It was too gusty for the bike, though, so I walked in.
No, not me in the pic. That’s Grok again. I swear, no illustrator will ever be hired for anything ever again.
Stopped for a coffee and left a trail and a puddle under the table at the cafe. Fortunately, I had a spare pair of jeans in the office.
It’s about a mile and a half from my front door to work. An enjoyable walk on a nice day, bearable on a day like today.
You know those 10,000 steps we’re supposed to take every day? Do you know how far that is? FIVE MILES. Every day. I get tired just thinking about it.
Good weekend!
January 24, 2025 — 6:47 pm
Comments: 5
Life advice
I think this guy is trying to protect his parking space, but this sign cracks me up every time I walk past it.
A storm is arriving tonight. Storm Eowyn.
Since when do we name storms after fictional characters? Notwithstanding the considered opinion of thebump.com, I think Eowyn only means “horse lover” in Tolkien’s made up language.
Anyway, I’m’a go charge up all my shit and hunker down.
January 23, 2025 — 6:53 pm
Comments: 14
Now, that makes perfect sense.
The biggest surprise from Game of Thorns was learning that Trump is genuinely religious. There was so much kerfuffle in 2016 about whether evangelicals would go for him – I’m sure that’s why he chose Pence – that you’d think someone would’ve brought up the fact he’s a regular church-goer.
He was raised as a conventional Presbyterian (me too), but when he moved to Manhattan, he got caught up in the Marble Collegiate Church. Yeah, that’s Norman Vincent Peale’s church. Trump got hooked on Peale’s upbeat flavor of Christianity and spent a lot of time there. Met his second wife at church.
I never read the Power of Positive Thinking, but Wikipedia tells me it starts with these 10 rules:
1. Picture yourself succeeding.
2. Think a positive thought to drown out a negative thought.
3. Minimize obstacles.
4. Do not attempt to copy others.
5. Repeat “If God be for us, who can be against us?” ten times every day.
6. Work with a counselor.
7. Repeat “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” ten times every day.
8. Develop a strong self-respect.
9. Affirm that you are in God’s hands.
10. Believe that you receive power from God.
I mean, is that not the Trumpiest philosophy ever? I’m surprised Peale is controversial, since that there’s classic Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is not.
After Peale retired, Trump took up with Paula White, a Florida televangelist. She was spiritual adviser during his first term. Don’t know what their status is now.
The picture is what happens when you give Grok the prompt create an image to illustrate “the power of positive thinking”. It was not at all what I expected. You think it would Google (that’s how AI works, yes?) and find Peale. Or do something abstract with brain waves.
January 22, 2025 — 6:09 pm
Comments: 3
Rethinking
I read this book over the holidays, about the 2016 election. Published in 2017, the author has been described as a Bush insider (credited with the expression “compassionate conservative”) so he’s definitely tilted against Hillary but not necessarily a fan of Trump’s.
I dunno. He wrote an authorized biography of the Trump White House in 2019, so probably on balance a fan of Trump. He croaked in 2021.
ANYway, I came away with a higher opinion of Trump. I was astonished at the amount of anti-Trump stuff I had absorbed unconsciously. As much as I hate the media, they still snuck a bunch of ideas past me.
For example, his family is genuinely loving, close-knit and protective of him and each other. From what I can tell, that includes Melania. I had taken the cynical view of his relationships on board.
It would seem, too, that between Giuliani cleaning up crime and Trump cleaning up a crumbling downtown, the two of them rescued NYC from the brink. I did not know that.
It’s no wonder he and Giuliana are close. It’s astonishing the City has such disdain for him, though. Ingrates.
I had forgotten what sleaze buckets the Clintons were, too. And that their own party worried about them and their recklessness. Renting out the Lincoln bedroom? Remember that?
It was an odd experience reading a history book about something so recent. I would have I thought I could remember it all completely, but it took me by surprise. I enjoyed it.
p.s. Holy shit, the first 24 hours have been GLORIOUS. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’re so accustomed to getting big promises and tiny payoffs, watching him sign all those wonderful EOs and chat easily with reporters – MORE OF THIS, PLEASE.
January 21, 2025 — 5:57 pm
Comments: 8
*exhale*
Iowahawk is the best. Remember his blog?
Not going to lie: I held my breath until the swearing in was over. I mean, not literally. I can’t hold my breath that long. I sighed deeply a lot.
Also, I had to bail on the speech. I have a very, very low cringe threshold. He was calling them all kinds of terrible shit AND THEY WERE SITTING RIGHT THERE.
Did you watch?
January 20, 2025 — 7:16 pm
Comments: 13