I was impressed when we pulled off a victory by GPT correctly connecting Wimbledon to Grass+London the round after it failed to choose London from MI6.
Some of its clues are hilariously bad though. I lost a game immediately because I chose Triangle+Star for geometry instead of Triangle+Thumb(?!)
This sounds amazing. I wish I had an android so that I could play with this. What I tend to do is look at the Wikipedia page for airports that I hope fly to a certain destination and if so use google flights to see what day the flight is and how much it costs.
I have played Avalon a few times but never with the Percival mechanic. However I don't think that being "shameless" can be the dominant strategy. If you make it so you must be either Percival or Merlin the opponents can always pick you as Merlin and win the majority of the time. So you could only employ the strategy somewhere and probably much less than 50% of the time. Yes it works if no one is thinking but lots of strategies work if no one is thinking.
As to the real life analogies my opinion is this: Being shameless is a political strategy. Sometimes it's real and sometimes it's an act. Genuine shamelessness seems to do better because people who are not thinking too hard like those Avalon players who fall for shameless Merlin still often recognize a fake personality.
I just bought an old house(1920s) and so have been doing a lot of thinking about how much better the layout of surviving old houses are.
1. Natural lighting. I generally do not need artificial lights in the daytime in any room and it is amazing.
2. Ceiling height. Modern constructions have insanely high ceilings. Why? In my old apartment I had cabinetr
y I couldn't reach even with my step ladder.
3. Old neighborhoods are much more pleasant to live in and are more much walk-able than post-war cul-de-sac filled developments.
4. House sizes were smaller back then. Since family sizes have been getting smaller I think this would be a good thing to return to. I am quite happy that I don't have to spend a lot extra on furniture just to fill the space. Or pay more to climate control the extra volume.
5. A matter of personal preference but I think the older houses are just prettier.
I think it would be great if developers took a look at the older house designs and tweaked them for the modern world.
Re. Ceiling height. Lumber, insulation and boards are supplied with 3m max height typically. (Some lumber, metal structural beams and sheet metal are readily available at 6m max length above this). Therefore, the generally expressed internal heights for cost efficient construction are 3m less inter-floor allowances for ceiling/utilities/floor/inter-floor insulation. You can of course do anything you like, but to your builder it means more work and materials.
In apartment buildings, it is common to squash non-ground floors vertically to obtain more houses within the available building height envelope in order to maximize returns. Local regulations in decent jurisdictions typically specify a limit to this type of viciously commercial construction outlook.
>Old neighborhoods are much more pleasant to live in and are more much walk-able than post-war cul-de-sac filled developments.
I'll say this for my post-war-but-still-old development, it's nice having trees and birds. Looking at new construction, you realize that there's very little shade or natural life because it all gets clear cut for construction. Any trees that get added back in have a long way to go before they actually provide shade (and a barrier to hide the ugly front facades that modern construction requires).
>House sizes were smaller back then. Since family sizes have been getting smaller I think this would be a good thing to return to.
I agree, and I like the size of my smaller house. That said, there are some ways that I think the space could be better utilized... for example, we have 4 bedrooms and 1.5 baths, all of which are smaller than you'd see in a modern home. It was definitely designed with a large, baby booming family in mind.
>I agree, and I like the size of my smaller house. That said, there are some ways that I think the space could be better utilized... for example, we have 4 bedrooms and 1.5 baths, all of which are smaller than you'd see in a modern home. It was definitely designed with a large, baby booming family in mind.
4 bed 1.5 bath does not sound great. I don't think I have ever seen that one but I know it is a staple for comedy where everyone is trying to use the same bathroom at the same time. That might be less bad now than in the baby boom days. I would not want to share a bathroom with a bunch of kids. But, for a DINK family, a master bedroom, his office, her office, and a guest bedroom with 1.5 baths sounds reasonable.
A study a while back showed that ceiling height can affect the way we think. It's an interesting read, but I doubt any house developers are familiar with it.
I thought of a potential loophole. What about a non-deterministic extractor? Let's say you can make your program smaller by having only a 1% chance of extracting perfectly. Just submit the program (for an expected) 100 times and claim your prize.
Through the magic of information theory, I can tell you that this particular trick will save you log2(100) = 6.6 bits. Probably not enough to make a difference.
I had the same tin ear problem. Then I returned to Myst as an adult and I realized that the position on the spaceship slider corresponded to the position of the key on the piano and I solved the puzzle by counting!
I think every medieval historian thinks that their subject is the root cause of the renaissance. I have read that modern world exists thanks to
… the Arabs who preserved Roman learning and reintroduced it to the west
… the Mongols who fostered world wide trade routes
… the Turks whose conquests of the Eastern Roman Empire caused wealthy and educated Greeks to flee to the Italian city states and kick start the renaissance
….etc
This time it’s the North Sea Vikings. I don’t think I buy this one. Yes trading was easier by water. But that was true everywhere and not just in the North Sea. Others have already mentioned the problems the currency claims.
If we had powerful enough telescope that we could see a civilization growing up 1000 light years away we could record it and provide it as a gift for when we finally meet. Or maybe there is someone out there doing that for us.
Some of its clues are hilariously bad though. I lost a game immediately because I chose Triangle+Star for geometry instead of Triangle+Thumb(?!)
Still cool though.