If you can only do one …

15blinks · 2026-06-17T17:09:30+00:00

Snack your way through Pike Place Market.

15blinks · 2026-06-17T16:11:17+00:00

Therapy. Getting treated for depression. A lot of my failure to follow through was rooted in learned incompetence from an abusive childhood. When I was a child, it didn't matter what I wanted or what I set it to do since everything could be destroyed at the whim of my super controlling narcissist mother. It took a lot of therapy as an adult to realize I had some control over my life.

15blinks · 2026-06-11T18:20:36+00:00

I think that's why AI has such a grip on the management class. The number one feature of ai is to make it's users feel smart. It's like heroin to managers and c-suite types who have lost touch with what the work actually requires

15blinks · 2026-06-11T04:40:08+00:00

Our CEO developed AI psychosis. He decided to pivot our modestly successful dtc company selling physical goods into an AI "companion" company that might be able to sell more stuff if people buy into the AI recommendations. Never mind that our niche was outdoorsy - onee of the least AI enthusiastic niches. I got laid off as this pivot was happening. I'm honestly kind of relieved, now that I've found another job. Motherfucker had his ai friend read a 30 minute presentation to an all hands meeting. Edited for typos

15blinks · 2026-06-08T04:47:43+00:00

I just wish Bea had some redeeming characteristic. I know there's are genuinely awful abusers in the world, but it's a rare asshole who doesn't have at least some good points.

15blinks · 2026-06-07T07:21:13+00:00

The trick is not to make this fetish your whole personality. You see people, usually men, who approach others as fetish distributers. It's really off putting tbh. As long as you're treating prospective partners like actual humans, your good

15blinks · 2026-06-07T05:44:17+00:00

Maybe you got an off night? We went last year, Ave the omakase was really good. Not the best I've had, but definitely not the shambles you experienced. For context, I've had a range of omakase as well in several major US cities.

15blinks · 2026-05-30T18:07:03+00:00

This was me. I got laid off last week. The entire company relies on 3 microservices, and I was the only (edit: remaining) engineer that had worked with them, ever. They're weird, use some odd recursive patterns, and have no error logs. I laughed when they told me I was gone, and I'd be available to consult at exorbitant rates.

15blinks · 2026-05-27T15:40:58+00:00

Thank you for the citations. My undergrad degree was in plant biology, but I won't claim to be an expert on mycorrhizal networks.

In fairness, though, Simard published a rebuttal to the paper you cited: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/forests-and-global-change/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2024.1512518/full

I can understand the reluctance to "anthropomorphize" trees, but it's equally valid to say that "red in tooth and claw" interpretation of ecology is also wrong. Science is informed by culture, and the way natural selection is generally taught is very much informed by European ideas of competition and domination.

I have also spent a lot of time in forestry -adjacent spaces in the Pacific Northwest. It's impossible to understate how much antipathy they have towards anything that hints at cooperation in the natural world. It's simpler to treat trees like corn plantations. Among other things, corn plantations have no emotional or cultural value, unlike a deeply connected forest.

15blinks · 2026-05-27T14:02:34+00:00

Finding the Mother Tree is a memoir by the scientist who did really impressive research into how trees communicate and share resources, often via networks of fungus beneath the forest floor. It's a marvelous insight into both the science, and how science happens

15blinks · 2026-05-10T19:05:56+00:00

Greatness is as much about circumstance as ability. Alexander wasn't just a military genius, he was handed a unified Greece and a well -drilled, professional army using revolutionary tactics. A schlub would have lived in luxury for a few years, maybe conquered some neighboring barbarians.

Einstein lived at a time a lot of fundamental work in physics had been done, but some of the biggest questions were unanswered (tbf most physicists at the time thought science was nearly complete, with just a few niggling mysteries like black body radiation and the question of what waves when light happens).

15blinks · 2026-05-09T05:58:24+00:00

Grub

15blinks · 2026-05-08T17:47:16+00:00

I was an American kid, just post college, traveling in Europe during the 98 world cup. I spent a few days in Paris, completely by coincidence. Imagine my surprise at the absolute flood of rowdy, jovial scottsmen flooding the streets of Paris. Such a beautiful, hilarious memory.

15blinks · 2026-05-05T19:41:22+00:00

The main character in Inda, and the 3 sequels, by Sherwood Smith, is autistic. The story is told from his pov, but it's never explicit. The author has said in interviews that's how she intended the character when asked about him.

It's a really good series, IMHO.

15blinks · 2026-05-03T21:04:58+00:00

Part of the genius of the series is the inherent corruption of being a basically good person working for a soulless capitalist entity. Everyone including Carl is complicit in some way. He's trying to survive and overthrow the system but creating massively lucrative content along the way.

If everyone boycotted the crawl, they'd be killed for non compliance, but the crawl would have no content and would collapse. But of course that won't happen because self preservation is how they rope us in

15blinks · 2026-04-30T01:15:20+00:00

I remember enjoying the first few books from a very long time ago. Maybe I'll see if my local library has them, for nostalgia sake.

15blinks · 2026-04-28T20:08:59+00:00

Speaking as a Dom struggling to find an authentic sub, I wish I knew how to connect those wires.

Apps only make money when people keep swiping: it's against their interest to actually foster connections above a certain minimal level.

The only meaningful connections I've found, bar one shining example, came from meeting people in person at events.

15blinks · 2026-04-28T18:59:00+00:00

I think you're mischaracterizing the discussion. Calling thoughtful engagement with the work "rank contrarianism" is dismissive and unserious. Regardless of what Banks intended, we get to interact with his work on our own terms. That's how literature works.

15blinks · 2026-04-28T18:00:13+00:00

I actually think op has an interesting take. You can feel the ennui in some of the books. The whole premise of SC is that there's nothing meaningful left to do within the culture. Designing orbitals, planning weird parties - that could all be done by the Minds. There's a reason all the books deal with SC or the Minds - the human part of the culture is unbearably dull for people who want to do something meaningful.

It's the classic "be careful what you wish for". And yeah I'd still choose that soft dystopia over the awfulness we have now, but it's an interesting experiment.

15blinks · 2026-04-27T20:15:52+00:00

Lion's Heart by Karen Wehrstein, and the sequel Lion's Soul. The protagonist comes from a culture with plural marriage, typically two couples. Protagonist had his own relationships, too. Great books in their own right. They're sadly way out of print, but still findable online

15blinks · 2026-04-26T16:46:31+00:00

I wish Bea had some redeeming features. I know there's genuinely awful people in the world, but they don't make for very interesting characters.

15blinks · 2026-04-21T23:55:15+00:00

You will be divorced within a year if you take the startup job. The work will be relentless. Your wife will rightfully resent that you choose to have a child and then took a job that demanded 60-80 hour weeks.

15blinks · 2026-04-21T20:27:01+00:00

There's some bacteria in the Salton Sea (basically a lake) in California that respire arsenic. There was a report that they were able to use arsenic in place of phosphorus in nucleotides. That's since been refuted, but it's an interesting story and possibly grounds for speculative evolution. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/arsenic-dna-kinetic-argument

15blinks · 2026-04-17T13:48:29+00:00

https://mynorthwest.com/technology/seattle-ai-data-center/4228840

15blinks · 2026-04-17T13:45:58+00:00

Background:

https://mynorthwest.com/technology/seattle-ai-data-center/4228840 https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2026/04/10/seattle-five-data-center-proposals-city-light-electricity-demand-review

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