The problem is that most hackerspaces are not this:
"warehouse filled with whatever equipment one could possibly need to make things and run experiments in a dozen different domains"

most hackerspaces that I've seen are fairly cramped spaces full of junk hardware. which is understandable: rent is very high and new equipment is very expensive.
but would be cool to have access to something like:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=530540257789037

Thanks, it's an inspirtional pitch, I can relate.

And my observation from this kind of communities (hackerspace, engieering/hacking conference), is that a large fraction (I think majority?) of participants are much more interested in the tech itself rather than in applcations. There is also not that much drive for novelty and innovation. 

I think that there should be space for exploration and learning, but to me, wizardry is about getting things done, solving actual practical problems.

For example, at hackaday.com, there are cool projects, but a large fraction of the (extremely talented) hackers are building yet another 8bit computer.

You should at lest give the credit to the inventors: https://reason.com/2019/01/16/how-scientology-recruits-inside-florida/ 

I have found that when using Anki for words/language learning, I frequently can't remember the correct translation exactly, but can guess the translation as one of top-3 options. In fact, this works well for me -- even knowing vaguely what the word means is very useful.

does anyone else uses Anki with non-exact answers?

I have similar issues, severity varies over time.
If I am in a bad place, things that help best:
- taking care of mental health. I do CBT when i'm in worse shape, and take SSRIs. YMMV. both getting dianosed and treated are important. this also includes regular exercise and good sleep. what you have described might be (although does not have to be) related to depression, anxiety, attention disorders.
- setting a timer for a short time, can be as short as 1min, and doing one of the avoided tasks for just that 1 minute. it kind if "breaks the spell" for me
- journaling, helps to "debug" the problems, and in most cases leads to wring down plans / intervations / resolutuons

Ha, thinking back to childhood I get it now, it's the influence of the layot of the school daily journal in USSR/Ukraine, like https://cn1.nevsedoma.com.ua/images/2011/33/7/10000000.jpg

I have similar thing for week days, but somehow with a weird shape?
in general, it's a similar cycle, but flipped horizontally, going left to right:
on top it's: sun, sat
on the bottom: mon, tue, wed, thu, fri
the shape connecting days goes downwards from sun to mon, tue, wed, then upwards to thu, then down to fri, then up to sat, sun, closing the loop.

not sure is this makes any sense )

unfortunately, AI research is commercialized and is heavily skewed by capitalist market needs,

so it's still going to be all in for tryinng to make an "AI office worker", safety be damned, until this effors hit wome wall, which I think is still plausible.

One possibility is that at some point AI products capabilities would be constrained by compute cost.

At that point, alignment "features" coule become a competitive advantage, so companies would invest much more in alignment.

The latest short story by Greg Egan is kind of a hit piece on LW/EA/longtermism. I've really enjoyed it. "DEATH AND THE GORGON" https://asimovs.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/DeathGorgon_Egan.pdf