Imagine living in a place where you could see the stars at night.

That's the spirit! What fun you must have imagining them all fighting about who's real...

They sound like great Gods, and I'll believe in them even though they don't exist. Where do we meet up to sing?

Nah, we think you're on your phone, asleep at the wheel, halfwitted, careless, angry and frustrated and in a hurry.

And you don't really remember the highway code, because that was some guff you had to study for an exam when you were eighteen. Nobody really drives like that, right?

And you've usually been driving for more than an hour so your minds aren't really on the job.

And you've got the music on really high and it keeps distracting you at important moments.

The few drivers who actually are soulless malevolent murderers who enjoy the thought of running over pedestrians and cyclists really make the other 90% look bad though.

I like to drive it at 30 miles an hour on the pavements and footpaths, scattering and scaring pedestrians and children. I am too much of a nancy to ride it on the road where it might be me that gets hurt, but at least I have a plastic hat so I don't have to pay attention while I'm driving.

Soon no place outside will be safe from hurtling steel, and we will have won.

I am planning to buy an off-roader, so I can get the vermin who try to hide from the traffic in the parks and gardens.

err, no?

Sure, but that's the only system we know is stable even over the hundred years or so we've been doing the experiment.

I would be cautiously in favour of STV, but PR systems seem to get rid of the 'you can vote the bastards out' feature in favour of permanent government by the same people in various coalitions.

Being able to change the government without violence is, I think, the only real argument in favour of representative democracy, and it's an important feature, because it's what stops democracies having periodic civil wars, and focuses the parties on at least trying to appear to represent the median voter.

Wakarimasen, Toronaga-san!

Oh that's nice, thanks, looks like if I can figure out how to submit a form from anki I'll be home and dry....

I can feel some python coming on...

Yes, I'm confused about why engines play so badly in endgames.

If you start them off a piece down then that's presumably a theoretically lost position, but they don't just make random moves because it doesn't matter...

What is it about the endgame that means that they suddenly start to favour the move that drags the game out the longest rather than the move that allows their opponent the biggest chance to screw up?

And actually, they often don't even play the 'drag it out longest' move, they seem to just pick moves at random for no reason.

And that means that I can often beat stockfish in positions which I have no idea how to win against someone who hasn't given up.

Maia does seem to fix this. She plays well in the endgame.

I wonder if it's possible to layer the two things, so that if standard stockfish sees that all moves are equivalent, it can hand off to maia to choose which one to play rather than rolling dice?

That's a nice app! Free and open source, and now a permanent addition to my phone. Thank you!

I can't tell you whether it solves my problem because it won't let me set up a position where I know that standard stockfish runs away, but I played with it for half an hour and it doesn't show that behaviour in the games I played.

I knew it!