I think you’re right, but I don’t think holding blackmail is relevant to their goals anymore, so there’s no point in releasing it right now.

Even if Trump could be blackmailed into doing more to help Russia, does it matter? The republicans control the house and senate.
All the U.S. has to do to benefit Russia is allow republicans to enact their domestic and foreign policies.

You’re one of the founding members of the greater Seattle area polycule, aren’t you?

I would move both of your pothos. I’d slide the one over the oven closer to the corner and find a way to allow the vines (limbs?) of it to ‘climb’ along the wall above your sink. I would also consider a way to have the other ‘side’ of it branch out between the rafters. (Maybe not screws for the rafters, but perhaps something fun like vintage clamps?) Same for the other pothos, move it over so more of the green is exposed on the wall above that bigger window.
Pick up a small bit of stained glass art and stick it in the window, too.
Mess up the design aesthetic some - Get an earth-tone placemat and a craft-y looking bowl and fill it with fruit or if you’re not a fruit person, something pretty and useful enough that it won’t get dust covered. (Grab and go snacks in bright packages?)
I’d reconsider the lights above the cooktop. Maybe find ones that are a bit more decorative, or certainly ones that aren’t just black.
Put a cork board or a chalk board over the cabinet to the left of the oven, and keep colored post-its or chalk handy.
Maybe replace the handles on your cabinets with something brightly colored or with a bit more character/individual craftsmanship.

I guess the idea behind most of what I’m suggesting is to make it look lived in, and to give it some warm tones/break up the stark whiteness of it. The individual suggestions probably aren’t as important as the overall idea.

Today I’ve been hearing they’re hanging around polling places all day, so if you missed out on going early, there’s still never a bad time to go.

In retrospect I think my comment sounds like I’m just excusing being sort of crappy if you’re humble about it.
I wish I’d included the sentiment that we’re all trying the best we can — because being a good partner should be the goal for any relationship.

Even though I’m currently only with my wife, I’m right there with you. I don’t want to add anyone to the mix unless their addition is very carefully considered.
I speak better in metaphor sometimes: It’s kind of like physics, almost. Imagine that we’re touching everyone in our life. If we allow someone to connect to us, they are going to impart their own momentum and direction. That is going to ripple through every connection we have, even if we aren’t able to measure or observe it. So we better make sure they don’t hit us so hard that pieces break apart or get damaged in the process.

That sucks, man.

I’ve been some stripe or other of non-monogamous for most of my adult life, and those types of relationships are often the ones that people experience first when they dip their toes in.
It’s honestly kind of maddening, because beyond making it seem like everyone who is poly/nm/whatever are all horny sociopaths (because almost everyone has something like that as a first story), it’s harmful. It’s physically and emotionally unsafe for the person who gets shafted. It treats people like they’re disposable and frankly, it’s selfish, insecure, and sometimes malevolent bullshit dressed up as a hippy-dippy love-fest.

It’s really fucking hard to be ethically nonmonogamous, and I wish people would stop pretending they knew what they were doing. No one knows, and it’s the faked confidence that gets so many people in trouble. People just trust someone to take care of them, and then the other person fails because they’re human, and humans fail. And yet… I can’t imagine not being this way, for some dumb fucking reason.

Toxic polyamory situation. A partner I lived with and was once very in love with fell away when she got interested in someone new. It was messy and shitty. I wound up dating someone new, who I had a great relationship with, and it was very physical. But I still lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with my ex.

My ex was a bit weird. She sort of viewed relationships as whatever things with no boundaries. Folks just do whatever they want in the moment and there’s no fidelity according to her. (Things I learned after I fell in love with her. Woof.) She also had intoned a few times that my new partner was a slut, which was sort of funny, given that my new partner had a pretty strong moral code.

My ex got a little less interested in her new guy, and tried to seduce me one night. And I rejected her. We had officially ended things, and I did not want to revisit that.
My ex sneered at me. “Fine. I hope you’re happy with [New Partner], and I hope [NP] is happy with you and your… magical penis!”

She practically spat that out at me, and… yeah. It was as funny then as it is now.

And for the record, it’s not magical. I just like to put top hats and little capes on it sometimes.

A base plate that’s got a spring under it, except for a little nub that pokes the power button.
Terrible if you live in earthquake-prone areas.

Wait. Are we describing a bump stock for your computer?

I’m sure once the paper gets ahold of the terrorists PR team for a quote, they’ll say they killed 5 infidels and had 2 martyrs.

But for now, it’s the government giving the quote, and they’re saying they killed 2 terrorists, and had 5 martyrs.

Editing to add: I don’t see martyr as a loaded term. It’s an honorific about someone’s death, when other words fail. It’s just a colloquial use of the word.

The goal is not really to kill civilians or even to harm Hezbollah. The goal is to destroy vital services to further destabilize the country.

Shirley you’ve heard of absurdist humor?

Yeah. I guess we’ll never figure out why oil washed up on beaches next to an offshore oil drilling zone. One of life’s mysteries, I guess!

Editing to add: The legal fate of the offshore oil wells is in question, and it’s not clear if work has begun on them or not. New South Wales has banned drilling within their territory, but the company said they’ll just go farther out to sea, where it’s governed by Australia’s federal laws, and I don’t know if they’ve actually started drilling yet.
Heck, those could also have come from a deteriorated WWII ship. Not that I seriously believe that theory, though.

You say “Not even close.” in response to the suggestion that Apple’s research can be used to improve benchmarks for AI performance, but then later say the article talks about how we might need different approaches to achieve reasoning.

Now, mind you - achieving reasoning can only happen if the model is accurate and works well. And to have a good model, you must have good benchmarks.

Not to belabor the point, but here’s what the article and study says:

The article talks at length about the reliance on a standardized set of questions - GSM8K, and how the questions themselves may have made their way into the training data. It notes that modifying the questions dynamically leads to decreases in performance of the tested models, even if the complexity of the problem to be solved has not gone up.

The third sentence of the paper (Abstract section) says this “While the performance of LLMs on GSM8K has significantly improved in recent years, it remains unclear whether their mathematical reasoning capabilities have genuinely advanced, raising questions about the reliability of the reported metrics.” The rest of the abstract goes on to discuss (paraphrased in layman’s terms) that LLM’s are ‘studying for the test’ and not generally achieving real reasoning capabilities.

By presenting their methodology - dynamically changing the evaluation criteria to reduce data pollution and require models be capable of eliminating red herrings - the Apple researchers are offering a possible way benchmarking can be improved.
Which is what the person you replied to stated.

The commenter is fairly close, it seems.

Maybe you can.
All the money I’d earmarked for kung fu lessons and a collection of random lethal weapons wound up going into pet care and hobbies. Besides, I definitely don’t have plot armor. I’d get popped by some junior security mail cop. They probably wouldn’t even have to shoot me. They’d run me over with their Segway, I’d fall, crack my head open, and they’d put a little skull and crossbones sticker on their scooter, like a WWII fighter pilot.

They have been corralled into a kill box, not “whoopsie, we stumbled into a war zone when the place we were born was turned into a war zone by invaders and we were promised this area was safe but now they’re bombing the areas they said would be safe and there’s no where else safe to go, lol, how silly!”

“The secretary also increased the readiness of additional U.S. forces to deploy, elevating our preparedness to respond to various contingencies,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters Monday.

Military.com: Thousands More US Troops, Attack Aircraft Heading to Middle East as Israel Targets Hezbollah in Lebanon

Ehhhh…… Israel is making this threat because the U.S. is sending more people to the region. Israel’s insanity and posturing is enabled by the U.S. putting itself in a position to be committed.

We already know Russia has assets in Syria and is fighting a proxy war with both the U.S. and Ukraine there.

It’s so shameful what greed and broken electoral finance laws in the U.S. have done to the country. Right now, an investment of a few million by a PAC can turn into billions of dollars from the government, via direct aid, passing laws, or simply looking the other way if a company isn’t being too obviously evil.

The primaries this year were highly telling in that regard - politicians were being nakedly bought in plain sight, but, again, because “you don’t fuck with the money” it’s not a question in political circles of whether overhauling campaign finance should be undertaken.

Well. That’s it. Get the flamethrowers. Time to burn down the Amazon.

No. Not the one that’s already burning. The other one.

For the 5% of my adult life that I’ve had short hair and no beard: Quentin Tarantino. For the rest of my bearded, long-haired adulthood: Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus. But they need to have blue/green eyes and forehead wrinkles.
(Huh. On paper that just sounds like I look like Nick Offerman, but not really.)

A boat load more, one might say.

Not me, of course. But someone.