blinry ✨ @blinry@chaos.social

Help, I'm trapped in a Menger sponge!

This is a "small" version of the model, available at https://github.com/openai/gpt-2. The researchers are still debating whether it is a good idea to release the fully trained model, see this blog post https://blog.openai.com/better-language-models/ and this discussion https://github.com/openai/gpt-2/issues/16. Fascinating!

Whoa, have you seen @OpenAI@twitter.com's GPT-2 text generation model? "Model prompts" by me, the rest is filled in by the model, adapting to content and style of my prompt like a chameleon!

This is based on work by @alancowen@twitter.com et al. Paper here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329824563_Mapping_24_Emotions_Conveyed_by_Brief_Human_Vocalization

An interactive map of the sounds people make to convey emotions. This is so much fun to play with! ^_^ https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/vocs/map.html

Here's how it looks like in action! I make most payments electronically nowadays, anyway. Coins go in the little jeans pockets.

Got a new wallet! ✨ #swag #accessory #style #fashionvictim #design #genuinerubber #artisan #wintercollection

[ ] Document all of it, so you can do it more easily, too! ;-)

[ ] Write a last will
[ ] Set up an advance healthcare directive
[ ] Set up a letter of attorney, so someone can act on my behalf when I can't
[ ] Disuss what should happen with my files & accounts when I die with a trusted person
[ ] Get my vaccinations in order (working on it!)

So many adult things! :| But it makes a lot of sense in the long term. It's also interesting to learn about these things, even kind of fun. And I'm not done yet:

[x] Registered as a business (because I now do things which count as "gewerblich" in Germany)
[x] Opened a business bank account
[x] Set up a password manager and changed passwords in all of my >200 online accounts
[x] Set up automated, encrypted backups for my notebook & server

https://thispersondoesnotexist.com generates an endless stream of faces, based on the work of Karras, Laine, and Aila: https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.04948

By the way, I guess in the time of our grandparents, a similar kind of small "corner shop", which sold unpackaged food was the default. Interesting to see a revival of that concept.

So, yeah. I loved it, and I think I'd like go there often, not least to support their approach and their idealism. If that sounded good to you, as well, here's a large map of "zero-waste" shops, mainly focused on German-speaking countries: https://wastelandrebel.com/de/liste-unverpackt-laeden/

The price level is well above average for some products (like snacks, or muesli mixtures), but on par or sometimes even cheaper than in supermarkets for basic ingredients like legumes, spices, or flours.

The concrete shop, http://wunderbar-unverpackt.de in Braunschweig, is also very cozy, and the staff is charming. I was surprised by the large range of products they're offering: lots of dry foods, dairy products, spices, tea, cleaning liquids, oil and vinegar, hygiene products, jams, …

Labeling is also clear and direct: Each label has a complete list of ingredients, the source (including the country), little symbols for vegan products, as well as the price per weight. Easy to scan, easy to compare, no tricks involved.

Being able to actually see the products in their transparent containers is also great. It's very easy to inspect and compare stuff that way, and it allows more honest, direct relation to them. There's a whole shelf of different kinds of cereal grains, and they're just pretty! :)

I love how there's very little visual noise in the shop! There's no need for different brands of rolled oats to scream at you, trying to convince you that they are the best. There's only one kind of each product, and they are labeled and presented uniformly.