@CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social

Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · May 18, 2026

Replying to @adamrice@c.im

@adamrice@c.im @NanoRaptor@bitbang.social (Tangentially, this was also a major theme of the movie The Prestige (and probably the novel it was based on, although I haven't read that). That the way to make a convincing illusion is to go to lengths that anyone else would reject as implausibnle.)

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · May 16, 2026

Replying to @hakona@im.alstadheim.no

@hakona@im.alstadheim.no @renardboy@mastodon.social @jalefkowit@vmst.io I remember a long time ago seeing a thread addressing the question "What is the one thing that an individual can do to help the economy the most?" and the conclusion it came to was "Contract cancer. The amount of money it gets flowing from insurace companies to hospitals to pharmaceuticals can dwarf your entire career."

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · May 13, 2026

Replying to @mogwai_poet@mastodon.social

@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social It's worth noting that when mycoprotein-based meat substitutes avoid being specific about their ingredients, it is sometimes because they are not made from mushrooms, but rather, from other, less appetizing forms of fungus that they want to avoid mentioning in their advertising copy. But on looking into it a little, seems MyBacon really is made from actual oyster mushrooms. Which surprises me a little, given that they're being coy about it.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · May 06, 2026

Replying to @hanakogames@mastodon.gamedev.place

@hanakogames@mastodon.gamedev.place I get why a developer would do that but I don't get why they would brag about it. It's like putting "Made with the cheapest available ingredients!" on food packaging.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · May 03, 2026

Replying to @mjd@mathstodon.xyz

@mjd

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · May 03, 2026

Replying to @mcc@mastodon.social

@mcc Looking at replies, relieved/disappointed at lack of Amazing Digital Circus references

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · May 02, 2026

In his original design as seen in Fantastic Four #48-50, Galactus has a big G on his chest and I think that's adorable. It's like a failsafe to keep you from taking the story too seriously. Later versions mostly replace it with a featureless circle and that's a shame.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 25, 2026

A semantic shift that does not bother me:
"literally" uses as an intensifier

A sematic shift that does bother me: "reality" used to mean subjective experience

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 25, 2026

Prank idea: Turing test, but instead of two humans and a computer, it's three humans. And they all think they're the judge.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social

My understanding is that LLM training data is tokenized in a way that means that the model doesn't actually have any record of how words are spelled. So it's no surprise that it comes up with answers that don't fit the enumeration, and are based on wordplay that simply doesn't work, like anagramming a word into something with completely different letters. But I'm quite surprised that this disadvantage completely vanishes when it knows the desired outcome.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 25, 2026

I've just been experimentally feeding cryptic crossword clues to ChatGPT, including both published ones and ones that I made up and whose solutions are therefore guaranteed to not be in its training data. I find the results interesting. ChatGPT is TERRIBLE at finding the answers, but actually really good at figuring out the wordplay once you tell it what the answer is.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @gwynnion@mastodon.social

@gwynnion@mastodon.social It's kind of like bragging "With this new engine, my car can consume gasoline twice as fast!"

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 18, 2026

Immersive theater idea: A production of Our American Cousin, complete with assassination of Abraham Lincoln. A two-layered narrative, farce interrupted by tragedy. What effect does the knowledge of what's coming have on the experience of the first two and a half acts?

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 16, 2026

Someone gave the DMV my address instead of their own. Now I have their driver's license, except I'm not sure it's valid because it has the wrong address on it.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 14, 2026

"Onset" and "offset" are not antonyms.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 13, 2026

Replying to @Aradayn@mastodon.social

@Aradayn@mastodon.social Reminds me of the fact that "())(" is palindromic and "()()" isn't

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 11, 2026

Replying to @hanakogames@mastodon.gamedev.place

@hanakogames I remember when slot machine roguelikes were new and exciting

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 11, 2026

Replying to @ColinTheMathmo@mathstodon.xyz

@ColinTheMathmo I had the pleasure of attending a talk he gave once. The content of the talk was actually a little disappointing, because he wound up having to spend most of it explaining his number system, which I already knew. But I vividly remember his use of "unlesss" as an abbreviation for "unless and only unless".

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Apr 10, 2026

Replying to @paul_ipv6@infosec.exchange

@paul_ipv6 It isn't even just a matter of "I'd rather read than watch video". I frequently prefer movies to the novels they're based on. But manuals aren't used like movies or novels. Movies are for watching all the way through. Manuals are mainly for looking things up.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Mar 30, 2026

Replying to @nickmofo@mastodon.social

@nickmofo The poem is inside your head, Wallace Stevens said to me The answer is easy if you're free with simile I'd like to help you with your avian imagery There must be thirteen ways to look at a blackbird Just one moving thing, King Three minds in a tree, Lee It's part of the play, Jay You know what I mean The people are one, hon Right after its call, Paul A mood in the shade, Dade Gonna get that bird seen

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Jan 16, 2026

Replying to @dr_barnowl@topspicy.social

@dr_barnowl@topspicy.social @talin@mastodon.social @cstross@wandering.shop That was a quite confusing thing to read, knowing about the real WayForward Technologies, a video game company best known for the Shantae series. I wonder if the real company was named after the fictional one? They both seem to have had founders named Way.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Jan 12, 2026

Replying to @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social

@cstross @Richard_Littler And, like, it's still basically a crackpot theory with no real evidence behind it, but it's a crackpot theory that's more plausible AND less insulting than the crackpot theory it's reacting to

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Jan 12, 2026

Replying to @cstross__dup_483@wandering.shop

@cstross@wandering.shop @Richard_Littler@mastodon.social This is why I've always liked the Woodman hypothesis. He says "OK, let's suppose Von Daniken is right about the Nazca lines: they were meant to be viewed from the sky. Does this really necessitate aliens? Or is it possible that the people of ancient Peru simply invented flight?" And then he goes and demonstrates that it is indeed possible by building a hot air balloon using only materials and tech known to have been available to the builders of the Nazca lines.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Dec 27, 2025

Replying to @ibk@aus.social

@ibk @vikxin @NanoRaptor Makes me think of Italo Calvino's "The Nonexistent Knight". There, a virtual human being was created out of nothing because the paperwork required him to exist. Today, we instead have product reviews

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Nov 20, 2025

Replying to @jessewagstaff@mastodon.social

@jessewagstaff Is it helping you debug?

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Sep 21, 2025

Replying to @joe@f.duriansoftware.com

@joe@f.duriansoftware.com It's on the Yunohost It's on the PikaPods It's on the combination Yunohost and PikaPods

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Jan 08, 2025

Replying to @mogwai_poet@mastodon.social

@mogwai_poet@mastodon.social Good last point. Attempting to stop the moose by getting out of your car and shooing it away is not advisable.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Jun 20, 2024

Replying to @samir@mastodon.functional.computer

@samir@mastodon.functional.computer This figure used to be higher. Nowadays, a lot of professional programmers are working on pointless or harmful *services* instead. It’s not that software is intrinsically antisocial, though. It’s just that prosocial programming tends to not pay.

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Nov 06, 2022

Replying to @cstross@mstdn.social

@cstross If the goal is to sneak increasingly rude things past the censor, you can always go Gaiman with it: "Elon Musk felches goats"

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Carl Muckenhoupt @CarlMuckenhoupt@mastodon.social · Jan 11, 2021

Replying to @fribbledom@mastodon.social

@fribbledom@mastodon.social I guess it’s true that we have no record of his term after that.

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