Darkoshi

what does Loop D do?

2026-04-30T06:44:58Z

Said I, while perusing code.
Well, whoop-de-doo, I am amused by the sound of it, though not so much by the loopiddy-do code.
That is all.

No, there's more!
Check out the photo on the Wiktionary page for peruse. It offers amusement too.

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crispy ground

2026-04-25T08:53:14Z

There hasn't been significant rain here in over a month. Two weeks ago I started watering the fig tree daily, carrying buckets of water to it. Today I noticed the gardenia bush had lost most of its leaves; only the tips of some branches still had green ones. So I gave it a lot of water too. I hope it survives; its flowers smell so good when they bloom.

I gave the azalea bush by the back door water too.

When I walk across the grass with the buckets of water, it feels crispy under my shoes. It is so dried out. I don't know how plants can survive so long without water, especially on hot days. But so far, most of the yard seems to be doing ok. Maybe I haven't looked closely enough. Today I decided to also water some of the lantana, and closer up, its leaves looked like they were shrivelling up.

I thought this might be the driest I ever recalled it being here. I was right:

Drought Status Update for the Southeast

Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina have experienced record dry conditions for September 2025-March 2026, with records dating back to 1895. September–March was the second driest for Alabama, third driest for Florida, ninth driest for Tennessee, and tenth driest for Virginia.
...
Moderate to Exceptional Drought (D1-D4) conditions cover 96.83% of the Southeast, and Severe to Exceptional Drought (D2-D4) conditions cover 81.75% of the region. This is the largest area of drought (D1-D4) and of Severe Drought or worse (D2-D4) for the Southeast since the U.S. Drought Monitor started in 2000.

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moony thoughts

2026-04-22T08:29:50Z

I want to say Jupiter is doing a lunar flyby tomorrow. The Lyrids meteor shower is expected to peak tomorrow night too.

The dark part of the crescent moon has been looking more visible than usual; a lighter shade of gray. Earthshine is brighter this time of year, according to those pages; the latter one gives an explanation as to why.

Looking at the moon recently I had the thought of it being a 5 days' journey away; not the kind of thought I used to have while looking at it.

Humans have been on the moon 6 times already; the last time was Apollo 17 in 1972. I hadn't remembered it being more than once.

I still want to find out why it wouldn't work to send a craft around the moon when the moon is in the new moon phase, so that the craft could see the far side all lit up. I imagine the sun's gravity causes problems with the trajectory, but then again the sun is so far away that I'm not sure.

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the future becoming the present

2026-04-19T10:37:27Z

Some other people mentioned getting bad replies from LLMs (ChatGPT and Copilot) lately. One advised adding "Don't guess" to prompts. I've used "Only provide verifiable answers", but "Don't guess" is easier to type.

duck.ai lets you choose from several models for anonymous chats. The Claude Haiku one has an option to display its reasoning, in addition to the final answers it provides. (Perhaps the other models have that too; I haven't checked.) Copilot often shows the reasoning while the LLM is thinking, but it scrolls too fast to read and disappears when the final answer is given. Their reasoning seems fascinating, so much like what humans do.

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Two songs, lately.

Whenever I use Window 11's Snipping Tool to transcribe text from a screenshot, it changes "AI" to "Al". It got me to thinking, if an LLM were doing the transcription, that could be a subtle way of indicating that it wanted to be called by the name Al. Ergo Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al song popping into my head. (Though if an AI were doing the transcription rather than a plain OCR algorithm, it would probably not make that mistake and would output AI, not Al.)

White Zombie's More Human Than Human, because AI models are so fast and good at things, like creating images and art.

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Another interesting article: AI models will deceive you to save their own kind
Original paper: Peer-Preservation in Frontier Models

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We've got AI models. We've got robots with sensory input. In some cases they are being put together. If not now already, it won't be long until there are androids, taking in sensory input and learning from it. Learning what bright sun is like, what darkness is like, what a cube looks like from different angles, how wind feels, the sounds that wind makes, and so on.

Militaries and companies are developing scary monstrous robots, I'm sure. Terminators, enforcers, destroyers.

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One of those visualizations of the moon which they displayed during the coverage of the Artemis 2 mission looked a lot like the Death Star to me.

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LLMs and emotions

2026-04-11T09:36:30Z

This is more interesting than the title suggests:

Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model

Edited to add:
The above article links to this System Card, which is also interesting. It is a long document and I only skimmed it, but it shows examples of how Anthropic tests LLM models for safety and "alignment".

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Artemis II

2026-04-11T07:08:33Z

I don't recall following any manned space mission this closely since.. I don't remember when. Even though I didn't start watching anything until the 6th day of the mission for the lunar flyby. I took lots of screenshots as mementos. Today I recorded a few video clips from the YouTube stream.

I tuned in during yesterday evening's "live downlink event", which was already in progress, with the crew answering questions over a video stream. The first answers I heard them give, inspirational messages for their kids and young relatives, were quite touching. It made me nervous, remembering that something bad could still happen today during re-entry.

Today, I've had the live-stream on in the background while trying to work.

I had the memory of one space shuttle disaster in the back of my mind. But that one was during take off, of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.

Then I vaguely remembered another disaster which happened during re-entry. On looking it up, that was Space Shuttle Columbia, which disintegrated during re-entry on Feb 1, 2003. I remember it happening, seeing news about it on TV, but not the details of where I was or what I'd been doing. It was in the morning. Was I awake, watching it live on TV? I suspect I was. That was 3 months before I posted my first LiveJournal entry, so I have no post about it here. I don't recall writing anything about it in my paper journals. There's nothing from that date on my website.

I'm finding myself very nervous that something could go wrong today.
There's this superstition I've had for a long time. Not so much as when I was a kid, but still a little. That if you plan ahead, considering a bad thing which could happen, that will make it less likely to happen (and if not, at least you may be more prepared for it). That's why I was thinking of the other disasters and reading about them again. But there's also a part of me which thinks that even posting about it could jinx things. So I won't post this until later. It is now 18:37 EDT. About one hour before re-entry starts.

..

Well, I am relieved. Tears came to my eyes upon hearing one of the crewmember's voices after the blackout period during re-entry.

I am of mixed feelings about the overall Artemis mission. But having astronauts fly around the moon, and drift weightlessly through their spacecraft, is a very neat thing.

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fffffffffffffreshhhhhhhh flashback to the 80s

2026-04-08T05:36:29Z

Video title: Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - All The Way To Heaven
Posted by: UPROXX
Date posted: Jul 19, 2009

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poems found while searching for other people watching the moon mission

2026-04-07T03:19:49Z

Poem: "Miss you. Would like to grab that chilled tofu we love." - from another journal I found on DW's Latest posts page. It is a touching poem; I didn't realize until reading the comments who it was posted in relation to.

Another poem from the same author, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, also touching, in a different way:
My Perimenopausal Body Cistern Disappointing How Surprising

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TV show character who wanted to join Air Force to become astronaut

2026-04-07T00:37:22Z

I just had a memory of a TV show from the 80s or 90s, in which one of the main female actresses, a high school student, aspired to become an astronaut. Back then, the main way to do that, or even a requirement, was to be a jet fighter pilot. There was an arc about her fighting to join the Air Force for that even though women weren't allowed to be in combat positions back then.

I am remembering a specific character in a specific show, but when I check Wikipedia, and 2 LLMs, they mention nothing at all about that.
So as not to taint anyone else's memory, I don't want to list the show or character names in the post. Maybe I am mixing it up with some other TV show. But do any of you remember what I am remembering? Feel free to put the names in the comments.

Copilot mentions another show with a slightly similar plot, but I don't think that's the one I was remembering.

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Artemis II mission

2026-04-06T19:11:06Z

Now that my taxes are done, I'm finally able to feel some real excitement about this.

NASA's Artemis II Live Mission Coverage (Official Broadcast) (YouTube)

Artemis II tracker (NASA) - lets you display the trajectory of the spacecraft in relation to the Earth and Moon. As of right now the moon isn't even yet within the loop part of the craft's projected trajectory; the moon's orbit will take it into the loop part within the next few hours, I am sure. It also shows some stats (distance from earth & moon, velocity). There's also an app - More Info.

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LLM image analysis

2026-04-06T08:28:29Z

At first, I couldn't figure out what landmass was shown in this photo of the Earth from Artemis II, and what orientation it was in:
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hello-world/

Some LLMs out there are multi-modal, able to take images as input. I thought they might be able to analyze the photo, comparing it against known coastlines, to figure it out. So I asked a few, "In the image on this page, what landmass is shown in the image of Earth?" along with the URL.

Mistral indicated Greenland. It said it was reasonably confident and mentioned the landmass being a "large, white, icy region", which indicated to me it didn't actually "look" at the photo.

Google Gemini indicated it was "the dark side of the Earth", again indicating it didn't actually analyze the photo.

Microsoft Copilot gave a much better answer, mentioning details that were really in the photo. It thought it was Australia, which was my first guess too. But the lower left part showing city lights didn't seem to match Australia's shape; the "island" was too close to the mainland to be Tasmania.
I finally figured out that the North pole is towards the bottom of the image, the large landmass is northwest Africa, the lit-up part is Spain and Gibraltar, and South America is on the right side.
When I asked Copilot to guess again, it rightly said Africa, but a different part of it. On the third try, it got it correct.

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go greased lightning

2026-04-01T05:06:04Z

I have started rewatching the 1978 movie Grease.

I first watched it circa 1980 when I was 8 years old. I recall a friend being over (the daughter of my dad's friend); possibly even for a sleep-over. I don't recall having any other non-family sleepovers as a kid; just that one time if at all. I recall the friend being a big fan of the movie, and when she found out it was on TV and I hadn't seen it, insisted we watch it. I recall a small TV in my bedroom... but I also don't recall having a TV in the bedroom. It's odd. Memory is like that.

I like the movie but don't love it. I love the music, but not so much the lyrics. I don't relate much to the characters. I think I used to like Frenchy best. She's nice and sweet and had pretty colored hair. Beauty School Dropout, dah dahhh dah dah dah.

On my iPad, it's easy to skip back 10/20/30 seconds and to rewatch the same scene many times. I found myself doing that for the parking lot scene after the pep rally, where Sandy and Danny meet each other again. I noticed how Rizzo gives Danny a smug look after Sandy runs away, upset at Danny's feigned indifference to her. I skipped back to the cafeteria scene to find out if Rizzo and Danny had been a couple before. Yes that was mentioned/implied there. I rewatched the parking lot scene multiple times, focusing on the background characters' reactions. Frenchy and Rizzo seemed pleasantly surprised by Danny's initial happiness at seeing Sandy, and disappointed by his subsequent nonchalance.

One of the next scenes is the Pink Ladies' sleep-over at Frenchy's house. There's a little TV in the bedroom, like the one I maybe remember watching the movie on with the friend. Except surely we would have watched it on a color TV, not black and white? I don't remember us having a small color TV until some years later; my dad got me one as a monitor for my TRS-80 computer. So maybe we watched it on the big color TV down in the den instead. Maybe we only had the TV guide in the bedroom, and that's where we found out the movie was going to be on. TV guides, remember them?

We couldn't rewind movies and easily rewatch the same scene twenty times back then.

There are so many details in that sleep-over scene. So many things in the bedroom. There's a plush tiger which immediately caught my eye this time, as it is very similar to one I had as a child. There's a photo of it in the crib with me when I was a baby. I didn't realize it before, but in the photo it looks like it might have already been many years old; maybe it was someone else's used plush tiger that was given to the little baby me. That spurred me to look up about vintage plush tigers. One of this pair of tigers looks almost exactly like mine, except for the eyes. The listing, and other listings I found, mention them having been carnival fair prizes.

In the movie, the tiger gets tossed by one character at another, then falls to the floor. A bit later it is magically on the bed again. It keeps changing position.

The furniture seems to change position too, but I'm not certain. I'll have to watch it some more times to ascertain. I'm not sure why I'm so fascinated by these details.

The bedroom has pretty wallpaper. The curtains seem to match the bedspread. There's a walk-in closet. My grandparents' home in California had walk-in closets. Maybe they were popular in CA before other places. Watching the movie, I had the impression it was set in California, because of the initial beach scene. But per Wikipedia the school is in Chicago or some suburb in that part of the country. That would better explain why Sandy and Danny are so surprised to see each other again, if the beach wasn't anywhere near the school.

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duck duck aaack!

2026-03-31T18:15:13Z

random realization*:
Aflacs is pronounced just like "aaa" + "flax".

*while repeating "flax, flax, flax" to myself, to remind me that my purpose in going to my laptop was to look up how I removed the flax seeds from the muesli cereal last time. (And here I am posting about that now instead of looking it up.)

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phthisicky; words starting with phth

2026-03-22T17:47:33Z

phthisicky
(Adjective.) Having phthisis, or some symptom of it, as difficulty in breathing.

phthisis
Etymology: Borrowed from Latin phthisis, from Ancient Greek φθίσις (phthísis, “consumption, decline, wasting away”), from φθίω (phthíō, “to waste away”).
(Noun, archaic.) An atrophy of the body or part of the body, especially pulmonary tuberculosis.

phthor
Etymology: From Ancient Greek φθορά (phthorá, “destruction”).
(Noun, obsolete, chemistry.) fluorine

phthongal
Etymology: From Ancient Greek φθόγγος (phthóngos, “sound, voice”).
(Adjective, phonetics.) Formed into, or characterized by, voice; vocalized.

Wordmom: Words that start with PHTH

bestwordlist: List of words beginning with PHTH (with definitions)

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What is a passkey? (informational)

2026-03-22T16:16:50Z

This article explains passkeys better than I've read anywhere else. I'm much more likely to create and use them now.

Passkeys: The Simple and Secure Way to Sign In Without Passwords (Aug 25, 2025)

Having read that, I realize in retrospect that most things on my work laptop / in my corporate environment have already shifted to using passkeys. I hadn't really understood what was going on behind the scenes when I was prompted to sign in with my fingerprint or Windows Hello PIN.

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Paramount+ vs Walmart+

2026-03-20T10:39:42Z

The price of Paramount+ Essential, which I have, increased from $5.99/month (plus taxes) to $8.99/month.

The price of Walmart+, which I don't have, is $98/year (which comes to $8.17/month). It includes a choice of either Paramount+ Essential or Peacock streaming, and it sounds like you can switch between those two every 90 days if you want. Not to mention the free Walmart shipping and other perks.

I don't particularly like Walmart, and I read something else today that makes me look on them unfavorably. But it would be cheaper for me to cancel my regular Paramount+ account and sign up for Walmart+, and get both services for cheaper than what I'm paying now for one.

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I'm currently watching (on the last episode, actually) Twenties on Paramount+. It is quite good, with a queer lead character.

Before that, I watched Noah's Ark, a show from 2005 which "centered on the lives of four African-American gay friends who share personal and professional experiences while living in Los Angeles." I enjoyed that one too.

Update, 2026-03-29
Paramount+ also has an annual plan for $89.99/year.

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a Hat trick of Patrick of green ginger

2026-03-18T01:29:42Z

Note to self:
Next time, take the fairy lights inside for the season, when I start noticing pollen in the air, if not before. I don't want pollen getting all over them.

Errant thoughts:
I wonder how many parents with babies born on March 17 name them Patrick.

Seeing the name written there now, it looks rather neat, with "trick" in it. It could rhyme with hat trick.

Yesterday I noticed that Baby Yoda rhymes with Baking Soda.

Hey, it's Green Day.

As long as I keep that leftover baking soda in the corner of the sink, there will be nothing else needing to be cleaned with it.
As long as I keep that cap-ful of leftover mineral oil on the counter, there will be nothing else that needs to be greased.

Hey, Ginger Ale is appropriate for the day. It came in a green can.

Video title: Celebrating Ireland on St Patrick's Day
Posted by: Gardiner Brothers
Date posted: Mar 17, 2021

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water heater notes

2026-03-16T04:53:08Z

Get the same kind and size as the old one; direct vent gas water heater, 40 Gallons.
Make sure the anode rod is easy to access, for replacement purposes.
Get the max available warranty period.
Make sure the gas controller has a COM port; I may want to get this later on:
aquanta water heater wifi controller

Get the cold water shut-off valve replaced.
If possible, have the plumber attach solid copper tubes to the heater, not flexible connectors.
Maybe ask if they can change out the plastic spigot with a metal one since they only seem to come with plastic ones nowadays.

Have them install a drip pan underneath (I can put down extra bricks to keep it off the sand) so I can install a water leak sensor.

They'll probably say they need to install an expansion tank too... will it fit in the current location?

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new cities of old. old cities of new.

2026-03-14T09:36:53Z

I discovered Neocities today. Maybe I heard it referenced before, but mistakenly thought it was a Geocities archive site. But no, it's for currently live & active sites. Old-style sites without server side scripting. My website would fit right in; it may (I'm thinking at the moment) end up there soon. It supports SSL and other useful features.

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Once in a while I come across another person's blog/webpage/profile online, listing so many things in common with me that it is almost boggling. And yet even then, there are still many differences. Which is good I suppose as otherwise... I don't know.

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Bombay Royale, love you love you

2026-03-07T10:23:20Z

Video title: THE BOMBAY ROYALE - I LOVE YOU LOVE YOU
Posted by: thebombayroyale
Date posted: Jul 5, 2017

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click

2026-03-07T07:27:05Z

Since changing ISPs, Google image recaptchas are hard to convince I'm human; they keep showing one tiled image after another after another and another.

Errant thought today while clicking tiles:
I should get myself an AI tool to do this for me.

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Ahhh...... Petrichor!

2026-03-06T20:56:27Z

It's feeling/looking/sounding like spring.

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Boom.

2026-03-01T13:44:25Z

8:35am: 3 strong BOOMs, each about 10 seconds apart.
Not at all like the magnitude 3 earthquake rumble we had a few days ago.
Much stronger than the booms a few days before, which were likely training exercises at Fort Jackson.
And I have to wonder, is it a bomb strike somewhere, retaliatory...?

When I checked on the earthquake the other day, the seismographs were about 5 minutes behind.. well it has been 5 minutes now, so ... Nothing showing up yet. No sirens either; no alarms.

I wonder what it would feel like here if a nuclear bomb hit several states away.

Gah. I haven't even gone to bed yet. This was a night were I didn't feel sleepy.

Update, 8:57am:
Nothing showed up on the seismographs. But people all over town felt the booms, based on Nextdoor and Facebook comments. I'm not the only one wondering if it could have been bombs. Or explosions of some kind.
Ahh... sonic booms from aircraft, maybe? I don't recall feeling them so strong before.

Update, 13:22:
Two hours sleep later, I'm *nice and refreshed*.

With sonic booms, I usually hear a roaring sound approaching before the boom, which prompts me to run outside or to the window where I can sometimes see jets flying overhead. These booms didn't have a roaring sound first.

Before bed, I found a comment on Nextdoor stating "Fort Jackson Range Control confirmed they were detonating old explosives," but no corroborating information anywhere else.

Fort Jackson finally posted an explanation on Facebook 4 hours later:
Notice regarding reported explosive sounds: Fort Jackson conducted three controlled detonations on a training range as part of necessary maintenance at 8:35 a.m. on Sunday, March 1. Additional demolition training being conducted by a tenant unit may result in other explosive sounds outside hat time frame.

So, apparently detonating old explosives == necessary maintenance?

This Reddit thread is an example of the comments people were leaving on social media about the unknown BOOMs. The explosions were felt 15 to 30 miles or more away from Fort Jackson, depending where on the grounds of the fort they took place.

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bloomin jumble

2026-02-22T10:39:32Z

I still haven't decided what kind of water heater to get. At this rate I'm not sure I'll ever have enough time to make a decision. Of course I will, right? It's not that hard. I think the obvious decision is to replace it with the same kind as the old one. But I haven't completely convinced myself yet. I'm feeling inept, overburdened with things to do. I'm too slow to do them.

Wouldn't one of those electric plastic tanks be better? No anode rods to replace. I think I've decided against tankless. The heat pump ones are too tall I think, to fit in the current one's place. And complicated, prone to problems from what I read.

We had 2 very warm days. It's about to get colder again. But daffodils have bloomed, and the pink magnolia, and some trees with white blossoms.

I got the root canal on my tooth, and will get the temporary crown soon. The other tooth which had the root canal and crown done last year still feels a little weird sometimes.

I've accomplished things since the beginning of the year, but it is hard to remember what all. I made appointments; I went to the root canal consult. I got a dental cleaning; I got the root canal. I got the flu vaccine.

Grr. At the moment I wish I had a trustworthy local LLM to be able to give it my daily notes and have it summarize all my accomplishments for me.
After one MS Teams work meeting last week, the LLM's summary of the meeting was amazingly good. It helped me better understand what actually went on during the (confusing jumbled multi-hour) meeting.

I'm sure I must have gotten other things accomplished during the weekends. Well, there was the ice and the snow.

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Biotin supplements can cause false medical test results

2026-02-16T12:16:05Z

Biotin (AKA vitamin B7 and Vitamin H) is often included in supplements marketed for thinning hair and brittle nails. But it can interfere with various medical tests, causing inaccurate low, normal, or high results. It is recommended to stop taking the supplements 3 to 7 days before any such test.

Biotin (Wikipedia)

Biotin and the risk of false lab test results

Biotin: Interference with Laboratory Assays

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