Ben Schmidt
I tell robots how to do their jobs. Pragmatic Progressive. SFF fan. Pittsburgh Penguins fan. Former Industrial DJ. Painter of tiny starships and mechs. Huge nerd (which should have been obvious from the rest of the profile). He/him.
- Reposted by Ben Schmidtyou don't say? at some point we're going to acknowledge what every study ever on this subject has said, right? right? www.independent.co.uk/news/science...
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- Sorry, but I'm not done posting painted miniatures quite yet. I put in my bio here that I'm a painter of ships and mechs. Well, here's one the mechs: it's a Jade Hawk from BattleTech, and I'm quite pleased with how the exhaust from the jump jets turned out!
- I realized I hadn't posted my most recent painted miniatures yet, so, if you aren't interested in such things, just skip this thread 😅
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- Reposted by Ben SchmidtReminder that being a transphobe is literally anti-science.
- Feel free to repost this so the bigot can see it. I already have him blocked. cen.acs.org/biological-c...
- Time to post more Star Wars spaceships that I’ve painted recently. These are all reinforcements for my Republic Fleet. First up: CR22 Gunship - a modification of the CR20 Transport from Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars
- My wife and I watched this last night, and it was utterly hilarious. If you've ever wanted to watch a movie where the main antagonists are a criminal group that is also a book club, then this will be right up your alley. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcsI...
- For this fine Christmas Eve day, instead of a Feast of Seven Fishes, I present to you, my “Fleet of Eleven Fish Ships”. Also known as my collection of Mon Calamari ships 🤣
- If humans were running out of ideas, it wouldn't take the US Patent Office more than five years to approve a patent.
- When I first saw this, my brain decided the image was something else, so now I have to participate to add what I thought I saw… You will be visited by 3 spirits
- Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar.
- The more I look at this diagram, the funnier it gets. I think my favorite may well be the "guest suite" that's just a sink in the corner of the family room, though the "gourmet kitchen" with no kitchen appliances or even counters is up there as well.
- Introduce yourself with 5 animals you've seen in the wild: - Bald Eagle - Grizzly Bear - Golden Eagle - Humpback Whale - Western Diamondback Rattlesnake All of these were within less than 20'. It is a bit of a misleading list, since most of them were from vacations, or before I moved back East.
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- Reposted by Ben SchmidtJournalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪
- This is one of the reasons it horrifies me when people talk about using LLMs to help them code. If you’re not the one writing it, then you don’t understand how it works. Which means you can’t debug it when something inevitably goes wrong.
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- As a break from doomscrolling, my I offer a set of painted starships? First up, a Victory-class Star Destroyer in Republic colors
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- I have to admit to being amused that YouTube has started giving me Spanish language ads on the Hocico songs I’ve been listening to. I kind of wish it would start giving me German language ads based on other songs in my “mix” feed…
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- Off by one error
- I wish I could say I was surprised, but really I'm not. The overwork culture of Silicon Valley had already become a twisted status symbol when I was there, so I'm not surprised that "meal replacements" have become a big thing there since I left. futurism.com/future-socie...
- More ships painted means more posts here. First up, another old-school WEG ship: the Ton-Falk Escort Carrier. This ship is basically a tin can full of TIE Fighters. Ship was modeled by Ravensfell, and printed by Pulsefired Gaming.
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- It's kind of fascinating to read this article and discover it doesn't once mention that Rodney Brooks founded a humanoid robot startup company, Rethink Robotics. That said, I think he's right. Which isn't surprising, because Brooks is (rightfully) highly respected in the robotics world.
- ‘Renowned roboticist Rodney Brooks has a wake-up call for investors funneling billions into humanoid robot startups: you’re wasting your money.’ techcrunch.com/2025/09/26/f...
- I saw a reference to a "name one band you've seen for each letter of the alphabet" meme, and decided to see just how many letters I could pull off. Turns out, I'm only missing two. Granted, some of these are rather obscure.
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