Hacker News: circlefavshape

New comment by circlefavshape in "I quit. The clankers won"

circlefavshape — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:29:35 +0000

It's necessary for devs right now, no matter how good they are, and it's those devs' code the models are trained on

New comment by circlefavshape in "Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years"

circlefavshape — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 10:22:16 +0000

Ah weird - the text of the page says Atahualpa had 80k troops, but then the infobox describes the Inca forces as 3-8k in size. I guess not all the 80k were involved in the battle

New comment by circlefavshape in "Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years"

circlefavshape — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 09:08:29 +0000

You're missing a zero. It was EIGHTY thousand, not 8000.

New comment by circlefavshape in "Woman who never stopped updating her lost dog's chip reunites with him after 11y"

circlefavshape — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 09:53:32 +0000

Cats are native to the UK, and less damaging to biodiversity than they are in the US because local wildlife has co-evolved with cats

New comment by circlefavshape in "The truth that haunts the Ramones: 'They sold more T-shirts than records'"

circlefavshape — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 09:38:37 +0000

I get a lot of content about "how to promote your band"* and it's almost ALL about finding "superfans" you can sell merch to - so the actual art is reduced to ads for t-shirts

* I've been in the same (unsuccessful) band since 1987 - obvs I have a day job too

New comment by circlefavshape in "Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching"

circlefavshape — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 16:00:06 +0000

I came back cos I felt a bit guilty. You're right - I was condescending and I'm sorry

I think your model of men's social status being solely based on strength, and women's on beauty, is too simplistic to be useful. Even male chimpanzees' status isn't based solely on strength (social grooming and coalition building are also really important), and female chimpanzees' status is not based on the males they attract. Human societies are complex, and people can be useful to the group in a zillion different ways. Men were never only hunters/warriors, and women were never only wives/mothers. Even in societies where almost all food was from hunting it needed to be processed and preserved, and that work was very often done by women. A beautiful woman who takes shortcuts when preserving meat and runs the risk of poisoning the whole family does not make a good wife

The core of anyone's power is how useful they are to people around them. If you're beautiful that can be part of your usefulness, but if that's all you have to offer then you're not going to be very powerful

New comment by circlefavshape in "Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching"

circlefavshape — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 09:58:29 +0000

[flagged]

New comment by circlefavshape in "Student beauty and grades under in-person and remote teaching"

circlefavshape — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 17:09:40 +0000

Nah, it is bizarre.

> You need to think of things from this perspective rather than the perspective of what's "taboo". It's only bizarre because society has conditioned you to look away from the cold hard truth.

Haha good lord. Of course you have access to the cold hard truth that I'm too foolish to see! Your fixation on "power" (whatever that means) is incredibly reductive, and I expect your knowledge of human behaviour is rather limited

New comment by circlefavshape in "Attractive students no longer receive better results as classes moved online"

circlefavshape — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:04:43 +0000

> For women the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty

Physical attractiveness is a social asset, and it's a more useful asset for a woman because men are affected by how women look more than the other way around - that's all fair enough ... but "the core of their power anthropologically lies with beauty" is a bizarre framing.

New comment by circlefavshape in "Afroman found not liable in defamation case"

circlefavshape — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:35:05 +0000

They're not. Really. You know less about the world than you think you do. Come to Ireland and talk to a cop

New comment by circlefavshape in "Afroman found not liable in defamation case"

circlefavshape — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:31:29 +0000

> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police.

What? You have no idea what you are talking about.

New comment by circlefavshape in "Austin’s surge of new housing construction drove down rents"

circlefavshape — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:08:23 +0000

This is nonsense. Agricultural subsidies are the largest item in the EU budget. Nobody is starving in Europe

New comment by circlefavshape in "Wikipedia was in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise"

circlefavshape — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:29:17 +0000

This is total horseshit.

/me wonders if you're a bad actor or just delusional

New comment by circlefavshape in "The Brand Age"

circlefavshape — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 10:16:52 +0000

and all the world is a stage

New comment by circlefavshape in "Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)"

circlefavshape — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:42:22 +0000

I used to play this on the street as a young lad, can't sing it at all anymore because I get too choked up to get the words out

New comment by circlefavshape in "How to talk to anyone and why you should"

circlefavshape — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:38:15 +0000

It doesn't really matter what you have to say or ask - basically the point of small talk is to express to people "I like you!". Just try to find something to like and the conversation comes (not always, but usually)

New comment by circlefavshape in "How to talk to anyone and why you should"

circlefavshape — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:31:09 +0000

I live in a rural area (not in the US though). Everyone knows I'm a weirdo, and almost all of them are cool with it. This is how people lose their prejudices - they meet a foreigner, or a single mother, or a gay person, and they discover that they like them

New comment by circlefavshape in "Anthropic drops flagship safety pledge"

circlefavshape — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:12:15 +0000

> As if science and engineering comes from genius brains not from careful experiments

100% this. How long were humans around before the industrial revolution? Quite a while

New comment by circlefavshape in "Heritability of intrinsic human life span is about 50%"

circlefavshape — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:55:58 +0000

My Dad (age 81) tore his rotator cuff splitting wood recently. It's slow to heal and he's in a lot of pain which (along with his Alzheimer's) is really getting him down.

Maybe even if you're still fit and strong in your 80s you should let someone else split your wood for you

New comment by circlefavshape in "Amazon cuts 16k jobs"

circlefavshape — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:52:24 +0000

> Why can't we architect the world we want to have? Side effects. Society is not planned, it evolves