One of the funniest scenes in Shaun of the Dead (2004) follows Shaun on his seemingly ordinary morning trip to the local shop. While he’s focused on grabbing his usual Cornetto and sticking to his daily routine, the world around him is slowly descending into chaos. Director Edgar Wright cleverly fills the background with signs of the growing zombie outbreak, from strange behavior to increasingly disturbing scenes in the streets. Yet Shaun remains completely oblivious, treating everything as just another normal morning. It’s a brilliant example of Wright’s signature visual comedy, where the real humor comes from everything happening in the background. The scene becomes even funnier on repeat viewings, as audiences notice details they completely missed the first time.

how many tokens are in one second of human thought? a weird question -- and seemingly useless-- but humor us for a minute... (spoiler: the answer is 1.8 tokens/second) suppose you are interested in the question of the reasoning efficiency of llm's. you benchmark open-source models against closed-source ones (astra). you plot the graph. you come to an eloquent conclusion: > the pareto curve on open source models reasoning efficiency is absolute garbage ~@part_harry_ the gap definitely exists and closing it is a priority. but is the gap because astra is really, really good, or open source is really, really bad? really, the only way to answer this question is to compare against a human. whichever model is farthest from human performance is the outlier. so we decided to benchmark a human (me) with the same rl environment we benchmarked the models. after playing chess variants for 49 minutes 37 seconds, the final human score was 30%*. this makes me dumber than astra (low thinking), smarter than qwen (medium thinking), and on-par with glm. assuming average intelligence, this doesn't really reveal new alpha. > the average human is smarter than a 27b model and dumber than agi. the question is that of reasoning efficiency. how many tokens did it take me to get the 30% score? i averaged 434 seconds per game**. intuition says the easiest measurement for fair comparison should be on a scale of time it took (me/the model) to reach the final board state. but this rewards throwing more hardware at the problem, and is not fair to me (the human), because i (unfortunately) cannot shard my thinking across a node of 8 brains. instead, it was more fair to use a common scale, energy. we assume the brain uses 20 watts (google tells me this is true, open to being fact-checked). so at 20 joules/second * 434 seconds, each game took 8.5k joules / 2.1 calories. a b200 uses 1000 watts, 1k joules/second. at 50 brain seconds / gpu second, i spent about 9 b200 seconds thinking. qwen 27b on one b200 on vllm ran at an inference rate of approximately 88 output tps. so to circle back to the original question, how many tokens / second of human thought? under these assumptions, one second of my thinking time buys about 1.8 qwen output tokens on the same energy budget. my performance is therefore: - 30% on this benchmark - 781 tokens of efficiency making me both a dumber and less efficient thinker than astra, and closer to open-source models in my style of thinking. this was a fun (and honestly a little disappointing for my ego) experiment, but the point stands: - astra is a significant outlier. - there is a strong gap between it and open source models this is a teaser to the work @baselabs is going to put out soon, in an attempt to understand a n d close this gap. *1 my score would have been higher if i had known/read the rules of what anti-chess was. what do you mean i win by losing? **2 following *1, i spent more time trying to understand the rules of the game, which counted as part of the time i spent per game. to be fair, this is time spent ingesting information, not thinking.

Happy Birthday, Xingqiu! #GenshinImpact# #Xingqiu# I was just gazing at the autumn colors in the courtyard, trying to think of a verse that might do the scene justice. But the moment I heard your footsteps, inspiration came all at once. "Autumn waters mirror an old friend's gaze. Worn pages rest where crimson maples blaze." Well? What do you think of those two lines? Since we're both here with time to spare, why not humor me and trade a few verses? Or, if poetry isn't to your taste... I could tell you about the latest martial arts tale instead. Thanks to BiBi for the fantastic artwork!

On May 4, 1944, at 20,000 feet above the plains of Kansas, a 25-year-old woman crawled through a cramped pressurized tunnel suspended over an open bomb bay and climbed into the cockpit of the most advanced bomber on Earth. Her name was Mildred “Micky” Axton. In that moment, she became the first woman known to fly the B-29 Superfortress—the aircraft that would later play a decisive role in ending World War II. Yet for decades, almost nobody knew her story. The B-29 was far more than a military airplane. It was one of the most secret projects of the war. Massive, technologically revolutionary, and heavily guarded, the bomber was so classified that workers were discouraged from discussing it even with family members. Access was restricted, and every detail was protected. Micky was never expected to be part of that world. In 1943, she joined the Women Airforce Service Pilots, better known as the WASPs. These women ferried military aircraft across the country, transported supplies, towed targets for live-fire exercises, and tested newly built planes before they entered service. The work was not combat duty, but it carried serious risks. After months of demanding training, Micky graduated and became a test pilot. She evaluated aircraft ranging from B-25s to B-26s and eventually worked with the B-29 program. While many pilots worried about flying experimental or troublesome aircraft, Micky willingly accepted the challenge. Someone had to fly them. Only weeks after joining Boeing in Wichita as a flight test engineer, she found herself aboard “Sweet Sixteen,” the sixteenth B-29 ever produced. During a routine flight, she was monitoring engine performance when an unexpected invitation arrived through the intercom. The chief engineer asked a simple question: “How would you like to fly it?” Micky didn't hesitate. She secured her parachute and carefully crawled through the narrow tunnel running above the bomb bay. Emerging on the other side, she entered the cockpit and settled into the pilot's seat. For roughly twenty minutes, she controlled the giant bomber herself. She banked the aircraft, adjusted power settings, and felt the response of a machine that represented the cutting edge of wartime aviation. It was a historic moment. Yet she could tell almost no one. The entire flight remained classified. The chief engineer documented the event in a letter, but the record was tucked away and largely forgotten. What should have been front-page news became a secret known only to a handful of people. The story of the WASPs followed a similar path. More than 1,000 women served in the program, flying millions of miles in dozens of aircraft types. They performed essential duties that freed male pilots for combat assignments. Thirty-eight lost their lives while serving. Despite their contributions, they received no military benefits, no official recognition, and no veteran status. When a WASP died, fellow pilots often collected money among themselves to help return her body home. In December 1944, the program was dissolved. The women who had proven their skill and courage were sent home, and for decades their service remained largely overlooked. Official recognition did not arrive until 1977, when legislation finally granted WASPs veteran status. By then, Micky was already 60 years old. She had returned to civilian life, teaching biology, science, and aeronautics in Wichita schools. She inspired generations of students, shared her passion for aviation, and quietly preserved the history of a program many Americans had forgotten. Then, decades later, the secret resurfaced. In 2006, Boeing publicly shared her story, and the long-hidden letter confirming her B-29 flight became widely known. More than sixty years after the event, the world finally learned that a young woman from Kansas had been the first female pilot to fly one of history's most famous bombers. Recognition continued to arrive. In 2009, a restored PT-19 training aircraft was dedicated in her honor and named “Miss Micky.” When asked what artwork should appear on the aircraft, she responded with characteristic humor, requesting a flattering swimsuit image. The aircraft still carries that tribute today. That same year, legislation was signed awarding the WASPs the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest honors bestowed by Congress. Sadly, Micky did not live to attend the ceremony. She passed away on February 6, 2010, at the age of 91. The medal presentation took place just over a month later, and her family accepted the honor on her behalf. Mildred Axton never flew combat missions and never dropped a bomb. Her legacy was something different. On that day in 1944, she challenged the belief that certain cockpits belonged only to men. By taking the controls of the B-29, she demonstrated that skill, courage, and determination are not limited by gender. For the rest of her life, she carried that lesson into classrooms, airfields, and conversations with young people who dreamed of reaching beyond the boundaries others set for them. The recognition may have arrived decades late. But the path she helped open has remained open ever since.

Al Pacino’s performance in Scent of a Woman might not have deserved the Oscar for Best Actor over Denzel Washington in Malcom X, but damn it, I love this performance & I love this film. Pacino’s emotional range in this film is off the charts. It’s a reminder of how electric he was in the ‘90s. This also includes one of the best monologues of all time.