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Iain Bancarz@iainrb.bsky.social |
351 followers 328 following 4018 posts
Fights cancer with computers in Toronto, Canada. Fan of SF, cinema and various sports. 🇨🇦/🇬🇧 citizen. Parent, husband, cat servant. He/him.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Maximus' son (executed on Commodus' orders) was the same age. So Maximus and Lucilla would've both been cheating on their respective spouses, which seems out of character. But who knows. 😕
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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I'm not even a little surprised. I guess I'm more cynical about peer review than you are. 😜
1 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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My favorite example of that is the agent for a car racing game. It worked out that it could drive backwards from the starting point for one car length, then forwards again, to cross the finish line first. Victory! 🙃
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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The paper is right here. Unfortunately this kind of thing happens regularly in ML research.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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The UK Conservatives have a very similar no-confidence procedure (threshold number of signatures secretly delivered to the chair of the 1922 Committee of MPs). They had 5 leaders in 8 years and the moral fiber of rabid weasels on meth, but were still more orderly than the recent Biden freakout.
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The Babe with the Power 🇺🇸🇲🇽
@babewiththepower.bsky.social
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🖖🏼Feed.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Writing a technical document and wondering if a requirement for 400MB of disk space is even worth mentioning. I remember when 1 MB was a really impressive size for a hard disk. 😀
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Fun fact, even if Trump has named a VP, the party has no obligation to nominate that person for the top job if Trump dies. 🫠
1 replies 0 reposts 7 likes
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Bakka Phoenix Books
@bakkaphoenix.bsky.social
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It's a good day to stay at home with a book!
To help you avoid needing to go out in the storms, enjoy 10% off everything on our website today! (Pre-orders and items in-stock). Discount is applied automatically at checkout.
www.bakkaphoenixbooks.com
1 replies 3 reposts 12 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Now I hear Grampa Simpson yelling "Matlock!" in the episode where Sideshow Bob ran for mayor.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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If I gave you any thought, I probably would.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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What I look like scrolling social media
1 replies 3 reposts 27 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Totally unscientific dividing line: It's not a city if you can fit the entire population in a large sports stadium. Which puts the boundary at 100k or so. 😀
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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When people are suddenly given enormous wealth and/or fame (lottery winners, sports/music/film stars, dot-com millionaires, etc), some handle it well but many don't. Which suggests "handles power badly" is a common trait, not the preserve of a few ambitious maniacs.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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I spent much of my teen years playing this game. From my current perspective, it was not without flaws, but I still look back on it fondly. 😀
3 replies 0 reposts 3 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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It's all relative. We live in a world with cities of 20M+ people, where that "huge" settlement of 50k is not even a rounding error. 😀
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Fair enough. My background may be showing. In Alberta, "city" mostly means Edmonton or Calgary, both ~1M people. On my purely subjective scale, "unquestionably a city" starts at around 500k people, ie. Sheffield, UK or Atlanta, USA.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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St. David's in Wales is technically a city, and it has 1751 people. 😜 This is one of those weird British things where "has a royal charter saying it is a city" and "is a major settlement" are not the same thing. I don't know what you consider "huge", but I'd generally say 50k people is a town.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Inverness is lovely, but has fewer than 50k people, so calling it a "city" is dubious. Stornoway to Glasgow is 277 miles, 7.5 hours by car and ferry. I am from Alberta, Canada, so I know better than to say anywhere in the UK is *really* isolated, but some parts are more so than you might think.
1 replies 0 reposts 3 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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I wasn't disagreeing exactly, just trying to give perspective. Thanks for your tolerance of my botched arithmetic. 😀
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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But this post is correct (honest). The more settled parts of the USA are very similar to western European countries (the UK, and especially England, being more densely populated than most of western Europe). bsky.app/profile/iain...
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Before you go further, I screwed up my km to miles conversion and the above figures are wrong, sorry
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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In fact I botched the conversion from km to miles. You are right. Sorry, my mistake.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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The point being, the parts of the USA where most Americans live have roughly similar population densities to the UK. But the USA has *much* larger areas which are mostly empty of people.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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On the phone to book a car service. The obviously artificial voice recognition system makes fake keyboard noises to pretend it's a human typing. I wish they wouldn't do this. In the words of Michael Corleone, it insults my intelligence; it makes me very angry.
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tweety fish
@sifu.tweety.fish
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glad people are still mocking this one; so seldom do you see such an obvious first ballot candidate for the hall of legendarily dumb papers as this, may people remember how fucking stupid it was for a thousand years
0 replies 6 reposts 19 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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2ish hours is technically possible but costly. It makes sense for Beijing-Shanghai, but those are mega-cities with about 4 times the population of Scotland *each*. However French TGV speeds would be 3 to 3.5 hours and that's totally doable.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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On a back-of-envelope calculation, about 2 hours. The fastest non-maglev trains in the world (ICE in Germany, Fuxing in China) can do 350 km/h. Edinburgh to London is roughly 640 km. Beijing to Shanghai is 4hr 18m over 1302 km.
1 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Jeanne Thornton
@jeannethornton.bsky.social
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hot take: high fantasy has become too much about wonky palace intrigue and eldritch spectacle. i just want a series of three books where decent folks walk to maybe 15-20 places and describe how they camp, sleep, and eat at each, plus poems in a fake language
11 replies 19 reposts 80 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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I read LOTR out loud to my son, which forced me to slow down and pay attention. Another thing which stands out is the detailed descriptions of vegetation. That man loved his trees.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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*Gestures grandly from balcony* We're going to have... a tournament!
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Our campaign will be like the boat in Titanic. Like the friendship of the junkies in Trainspotting. Like the Italian holiday in The Talented Mr Ripley. Like the film students in The Blair Witch Project. We haven't seen any films released after 1985, but we're sure all of those turned out great.
1 replies 0 reposts 3 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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I lived in the UK in the 1990s and can confirm some of them have. Just not Farage and his goons. It's only been out for (checks notes) 34 years, I'm sure they'll get around to it. 🙃
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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It wouldn't surprise me. I remember the asp thing from an interview with him shortly before LOTR came out. He was saying most of the cast weren't ready for how your life changes after you've starred in an extremely popular film. 😀
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Fair enough. John Rhys-Davies has had strangers repeating that line at him for decades. 😀
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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"Asps. Very dangerous. You go first."
2 replies 0 reposts 10 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.
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The Foggy Jew
@hmcevansoneya.bsky.social
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George Galloway *losing* his seat in an election where a bunch of single-issue pro-Palestine Independents were elected is really, really funny
5 replies 101 reposts 432 likes
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Mags L Halliday
@magslhalliday.bsky.social
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Larry the cat now holds the record for Prime Ministers a single Chief Mouser to the Treasury has tolerated. 6 PMs: Larry (2011-present) 5 PMs: Peter III (1947-1964) and Peter (1929-1946) 4 PMs: Wilberforce (1973-1987) 3 PMs: Humphrey (1989-1997) and Peta (1964-1976)
5 replies 70 reposts 185 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Continuing to enjoy the UK election news. BBC radio currently interviewing pretty much anyone they can round up who's still awake. 😀
1 replies 1 reposts 6 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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In the case of the new PM, this is fine, and not even slightly edgy. Even the BBC doesn't call him Sir Keir most of the time. But nobody in the UK says "Sir Starmer", that's like calling Charles "King Windsor". Not offensive, but sounds very weird.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Those are only the famous ones. There's a lot of senior civil servants (which is how Starmer got his knighthood), military officers, business people, a few academics. But it's not a hereditary title and most holders are inoffensive enough, so I'm OK with it.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Maybe Hunt. But more likely one of the headbangers. Too bad. For maximum comedy value, they could give the job back to Iain Duncan Smith, but it won't happen. 😢
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John Bull
@garius.bsky.social
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MOGG LOSING HIS SEAT GIVES LABOUR THE WIN. FUCKING AYEEEEEEE
7 replies 26 reposts 274 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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I was born in Canada and lived for years in Scotland, I am familiar with terrible weather. 😉 But the Lib Dems have just won South Cambridgeshire for real, which is nice. 😀
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Likewise, but for South Cambridgeshire 😀
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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My guide to identifying party of British candidates from a photo. 😀
0 replies 2 reposts 8 likes
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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What are the funniest location names near you? Ball's Falls, Ontario is pretty good.
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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Boring, Oregon is twinned with the town of Dull in Scotland. I kid you not. 😀
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Iain Bancarz
@iainrb.bsky.social
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It's reefer madness here in Canada 😁
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes