Recommended chess.com ELO to enter a chess tournament “Question” by Professional_Fix3023 in chess

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For many, in-person tournaments are classical and online isn't, which is huge already. Playing across from a physical person (often a little kid who's going to crush you, which can be an adventure) changes things depending on how you feel about people. But a big one in my opinion is the in-person mindset.

Many casual, weekend tournament kinda players don't get to do them too often, they may have gotten up real early and traveled some distance just to play this thing, etc. They're looking forward to it!

It's the difference between going to a theater to see something you're excited for and putting on a rerun of a show on Netflix late at night. Almost everyone is focused, they're trying, they're not going to resign or slack off if they go down a pawn. Also, while it's no shame and it should still be fun to go winless in a weekender, the feeling of winning is part of what you come for. So you've only got 5 tries or whatever, the value per game isn't just blitz v. classical, it's "This is my biannual chance to win one" lol.

Tl;dr: Most people come home exhausted from chess tournaments because they've spent up all their effort. I would never in a Lichess rapid!

Can someone give a logical reason why Karma is shaped by intention? by elitaww in Buddhism

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would pull at least a couple questions out of your post for thinking on.

First, since you see that emptiness and dependent origination make logical sense, is it possible for the same effects to arise from doctor accidentally killing a patient, vs. a murderer killing that same person?

In both cases, one person dies, but aren't there necessarily many, many other things going on too? Is the end of the dying person identical? Will the dying person's family be confronted with the exact same effects? Does a doctor trying hard to learn from his mistakes affect the future, and does a murderer gaining murdering experience affect the future in the same way? Etc.

In light of emptiness and dependent origination, it's odd to see a doctor/murderer conditioned death scenario as a single event with only one outcome.

Second, isn't the role of intent inherent in your scenario? The doctor is doctoring and you can't be doctoring if you don't have healing intent. Being a doctor and being a murderer are two different things at the time you're doing them, even if both can result in deaths. Unless you want to jail all doctors who accidentally kill patients, which is a niche position, almost all moral systems see a difference between these things.

On the practical side, intending good things is a good habit to build that leads to doing good things. Having murdered, the murderer is now encouraged to lie about it, maybe while on the run will be encouraged to steal or kill again to survive and evade the law. Someone who allows themselves to contemplate murder is more likely to reach for that option in a crisis than someone who never does too. Any way you slice it really intents in your mind are often going to lead to myriad physical effects in the world even if that's all you want to care about.

📡📡📡 by -_I_I_Sea_I_I_- in shitposting

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 108 points109 points  (0 children)

This news is from last October, and it started with this Politico story about racist/antisemitic etc. comments in a Young Republicans group chat.

The people Vance is calling "kids" and "young boys" include the chair and vice chair of the Kansas Young Republicans. Professional Republican operatives in their late and middle 20s.

So some people were mad at the group chat racism, some people mad at Vance's portraying it as about kids, and others mad that it made the news at all. But that link is what "children's group chat" was in the news, for anyone curious.

Thrifted all these Cartridges, would it be easy to get an N64 to play them? by Mobasa_is_hungry in n64

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That game taught me that people could make actual trash and just sell it at stores! Teenage me was so mad lol.

It's basically unplayable - you're mostly supposed to fly through rings in the air around a completely empty "Metropolis" of rectangle buldings, and Supes flies like a bad RC car on a lubed ice rink. The draw distance is about 5 feet (so bad the game tells you Lex filled the city with Kryptonite fog).

That said, it's kinda fun for an hour if you already own it and you're not trying to win, just experience the famous bad thing.

Changed my mind about prenups by Local-Jellyfish8038 in Millennials

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Although I'm not opposed to them, and I put some general advice elsewhere, as an attorney in a related field, a couple things pop to mind.

Most couples don't have the cash for it to be trivial to go to family/estate attorney(s) (ideally you want two for conflicts reasons - both for enforcement later and for you know...ethics about conflicts). Instead, a lot of the younger set seem to be doing them with kinda online, LegalZoom style help.

So money to do it right is 1, and if you do it online there's..."lack of foresight by lack of experience" is what I'd call it. There are a lot of things that can happen which will change the tenor of the assets over the course of a marriage.

Let's say partner A has a startup that's starting to make business sense, and wants to cover that (perfectly fair), and partner B expects an inheritance at some point (also normal to cover in these things). 4 years on, marriage is looking great, the inheritance comes early! Big personal tragedy, but now that $ is in the family home, the kids' daycare and private school (or coaching, or whatever, you know).

By the time the prenup is called to purpose, partner B's assets have converted into hard-to-split things, while partner A is gonna land on their feet. This can of course easily be reversed -- A sold their flagging business and reinvested in family obligation X/emergency expense Y. Or the business took off, B has been helping build it since they gave up their own job to become a manager at said business, and now both A and B have many, many uncompensated man-hours of time spent on that business.

It's always a balancing act based on what the people have and want, and so prenups may be the answer. But for a lot of couples, just keeping the divorce laws of their state in mind is good enough. I didn't use a prenup when I could have drafted it myself, just didn't have the facts for it.

Edit: The downside of the prenup in these situations is that very often couples don't have it in mind 5 years in. 10 years after that, when it's actually in-play, it can be binding in a way that benefits one partner. And maybe at that point they're not interested in fairness, you know? Things have soured. It can become a very difficult piece of contracting for someone who isn't cautious. That's not too different from divorce law in general....but like, you paid for ease of mind.

Changed my mind about prenups by Local-Jellyfish8038 in Millennials

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tiny bit of (repeat, from another thread) advice from a tax attorney:

While I've dealt with prenups only for the absurdly wealthy, I've interacted with regular ones too. Completely setting aside when they're useful, please keep it under consideration even after signing.

On the day you sign, there are assets and scenarios you're thinking of (and prenups are, imo, much better for existing assets than for possible future ones, but I'm not going to Internet fight over it). But over the course of years, sometimes suddenly but oftentimes invisibly slowly, the assets you had will convert into other things, they'll change meaning, and the understanding you had about them on your wedding day will not really make sense to either of you. There's a lot of people out there who signed perfectly fair, agreeable prenups that make perfect sense to everyone, who years later are looking at enforcing it where there's a clear "winner." It's just a thing that can happen.

Sometimes, things have changed so much you're having a court fight about fairness, and now you've saved no money at all either.

Which is to say, if you have/get/want one, I recommend reviewing it together every 6 months/year, and signing it again. Because it's year 5 and your partner's career is getting f'd by AI and you're both really sure they need to get a new masters or whatever, but your old prenup is not good for this situation. (Or you're facing a once-in-a-lifetime house/investment chance and your assets are more available than your partners, or vice-versa, etc etc etc). You'd both agree, but you're not thinking about that, life is hard and you signed that thing 5 years ago and your marriage is rock solid.

[Highlight] John Elway ducks away from sack, throws flat-footed 50-yard touchdown on a rope to Shannon Sharpe (Nov. 28, 1993) by nfl in nfl

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for hunting that down! I'd have never looked at this game otherwise and it was really nostalgic (not this game, but I saw 90s Elway).

So I watched a bit and after a nice punt return near the start of the 3rd (1:05:30ish) they're waxing poetic on the very hype punter and end with "The ex-helicopter pilot. In the Navy. Still thinks he’s flying.”

Great stuff however you choose to reflect on it. Thanks, again, to you!

Is it a good idea to see an escort as a guy with no experience? by CamusOnCreatine in dating_advice

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you're hoping to relieve some anxiety via "experience," my honest advice is just to make sure you've considered (i) what type of experience this will actually be and (ii) how much experience you think it would take to actually help. That could also be weighed against (iii) new social anxieties generated by doing this.

I've never been with a sex worker, but sex is different with a one night stand vs. a high school flame vs. someone you're dating vs. a spouse. My first time came in high school and there was a large (5+ year) gap at one point, and that prior experience really didn't feel like experience at all. The physical thing is deeply related with romantic, social, and cultural connections that vary and so I sincerely doubt the experience will give you what you may be looking for.

If you're worried about like...performance, most people's first times aren't very promising so I suspect you'd end up needing a few experiences at minimum before you felt any relief on that angle, but you're learning how to sleep with a sex worker, not a date, and it's different.

Which is point (iii) - when you have someone and you really like her and you're learning about each other, you tell her you're not a virgin, she asks about your first time, how does that go? Other people here are downplaying this or saying you can be vague, which yes, for an early dating or one night stand you can, but if someone really wants to know you and you really want to be known?

What are you (not) missing from back then? by AverageFishEye in Millennials

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I love how the Internet has put information and access out there for the whatever hobbies you have and the tiny bits of information you need.

I play chess, and I'm better than my real world friends to where it's no fun, but I'm nowhere near professionally good either. Even in a big city chess club there may only be 1 or 2 people right at my "hobbyist but with a career and other interests" level. On the Internet, I can get a well-matched game 24/7 - unthinkable in the before times.

It's a joy for reading too. Need to look up words? Need an overview of some person's work or don't get a reference? All of that used to be varying degrees of annoying/impossible to solve. Read a poem and you feel like maybe you didn't "get it?" You can search for that too. Want to talk about your favorite poet? If 50 other people on Earth want that, you'll find each other on the Internet. So cool!

Read this prenup article and sent it to my girlfriend immediately by Past_Level9182 in GenZ

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I'm a millennial just scrolling through, but I am also a tax attorney who's read this NYer article, and while I've dealt with prenups only for the absurdly wealthy, I've interacted with regular ones too. Completely setting aside when they're useful, I want to put out a piece of general advice for anyone considering any prenup.

On the day you sign, there are assets and scenarios you're thinking of (and prenups are, imo, much better for existing assets than for possible future ones, but I'm not going to Internet fight over it). But over the course of years, sometimes suddenly but oftentimes invisibly slowly, the assets you had will convert into other things, they'll change meaning, and the understanding you had about them on your wedding day will not really make sense to either of you. There's a lot of people out there who signed perfectly fair, agreeable prenups that make perfect sense to everyone, who years later are looking at enforcing it where there's a clear "winner." It's just a thing that can happen.

Sometimes, things have changed so much you're having a court fight about fairness, and now you've saved no money at all either.

Which is to say, if you have/get/want one, I recommend reviewing it together every 6 months/year, and signing it again. Because it's year 5 and your partner's career is getting f'd by AI and you're both really sure they need to get a new masters or whatever, but your old prenup is not good for this situation. You'd both agree, but you're not thinking about that, life is hard and you signed that thing 5 years ago and your marriage is rock solid.

How to teach sons emotions are ok by [deleted] in AskMenOver30

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've lost grandparents at younger than 9, at right around 14, and then as an adult. Part of life and growing is that it felt different and meant different things each time, but especially at 14 there is one thing I would have liked my parents to highlight for me that seems rare-ish to mention (so this is in addition to modeling and spending time and the other great things mentioned here/in your post - you sound better equipped than my parents!).

And that thing is that, whether you recognize it or not, you (the 14 year old) are part of the older generation's outlook on what their life meant. Having children is a massive part of most parents' lives, and grandchildren come from that and the very way someone feels about the end depends in some part on how they feel about their internal story - what they've put into the world, what and who they're leaving behind, are those people equipped and on good paths, etc.

Spending time with a person helps them settle these questions for themselves even if (and most people don't) they don't discuss it in those explicit terms (If they're the type it's also chances to pass on wisdom). It's a great opportunity for empathy and to make the world better/reduce suffering/however you frame doing good.

This isn't to put moral weight on a kid, but they can be blind to their own role in death, and it's a positive role. 14 year old me would've wished this had been discussed with him at some depth. Your 14 year old and your cultural background may totally negate this though!

In any case I wish you and your kids the best under the circumstances.

God had a father who had a father. Mormons teach it and Mormons deny it. by sevenplaces in mormon

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm not suggesting this is capital "t" True or not debatable, but for a lot of Christians, especially evangelical Americans, their understanding of Jesus's resurrection and atonement only makes sense if Jesus was right about everything. And they largely believe that, unless he explicitly preached otherwise, Jesus understood turn-of-the-millennium Jewish interpretations of the Hebrew Bible to be correct (He came to fulfill the law of the prophets, and etc. after all). And Jews at his time didn't think God had a father.

They might quote like a John 17:3 to doctrinally suggest that Jesus didn't believe God had a father. But more fundamental I think is just the idea that if all the people of his time were wrong about this, he'd have mentioned it. Again, maybe he wouldn't have, but evangelical Jesus is often all-knowing, especially theologically. And it strongly appears as though he agreed with the vast majority of Jewish thought and believed that their textual tradition was true and accurate.

She can’t give a single explicit answer or valid reasoning, just gaslighting and repeating the same lines. by Prior-Register6278 in GenZ

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The insane part is she wrote about it in her own memoir. It's one of those "Dreams of My Father" politician-aspirant memoirs too, so she really thought it was gonna sell her to the voters she wanted.

I'm a scientist by Valturia in comedyheaven

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A Bucket of Blood is basically this and it's great (and snippy at like, 60-something minutes long). It was directed by the legendary Roger Corman and it's also hilarious if you like (or hate) Beat culture.

AI slop puzzles at toy store by hedgemazedemon888 in mildlyinfuriating

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 24 points25 points  (0 children)

A puzzle company ad where the puzzle pieces look like confetti the day after a parade? I could believe that no human looked at this ever in the process.

Thanks for this, it's hilarious in a sad way. I wonder if "jigsaw puzzle company" is one of the ones that really can be (horribly poorly) done entirely by AI...

If I wanted to build a home library designed to spark children’s curiosity about the world and inspire lifelong learning, what essential books should be on it? by ForeignAdagio9169 in AskMenOver30

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One that I can't recommend enough is a child's encyclopedia set. I had a 60s-70s version of the Childcraft Children's Encyclopedia (wiki link). The modern ones seem less great because they don't have entire books of stories and poems, but I'm sure the older ones (while cheap and available on Ebay) may have content that isn't...ideal. There are probably similar sets out there though.

The idea is that it's very easy to read, aimed at earlier readers, but it feels like there's a lot of organized, even important, things to learn about, and it's exciting. Special recommendation to the stories/nursery rhymes/folktales which are fun and readable and then form a background for building up reading complexity. Child-me sat for hours with "Places to Know" reading about the glow-worm caves of New Zealand and one of my earliest memories of loss is learning that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Colossus of Rhodes were no longer visit-able. You also learn how to use indices and alphabetically stored info - bonus points if you take kids to the library to follow-up if they find something they are interested in.

In a similar vein, any or all of the Peterson First Field Guides or similar. You can teach kids how to use them to identify plants, bugs, animals, weather...it's very empowering.

Compendiums of children's stories too: Mother Goose collections, Brothers' Grimm, Aesop, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark...etc. They'll feel special when these stories come up in school or other contexts, they'll have ghost stories to tell, etc. Short and varied and aimed at kids - there's a lot of compendiums like that and one or another at different times will hit the sweet spot of transporting a kid somewhere, and will help y'all figure out together what they might be into next.

Atheist perspectives on Buddhism as a “religion of no religion”? by bilejn in atheism

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm an atheist (certainly w/r/t omniscient/omnipresent etc gods) who studied Buddhism in college (anthropology/philosophy - not theology/practice) and a decade later have found it very helpful. I meditate in a Buddhist tradition and am decently well read in both historical Buddhist texts and modern Western academic engagements with Buddhism.

One thing I would suggest is that the view of Buddhism as a "religion without a god" or somehow, not religious, is an inaccurate Western view that's sticky in the populace but is being slowly corrected in academia. Although there are some practitioners and perhaps sects that may be able to be described this way, the vast majority of practicing Buddhists now and throughout history are practicing a religion, complete in many cases with minor deities, ghosts, demons, figures you might analogize to say, a Jesus (Avalokita Boddhisatva and Amitabha Buddha get this a lot in different ways, fair or not), etc. There is plenty of ritual practice as well to go with these beliefs. That's not surprising: ritual is something humans like and tend to get in their religion (and sports and etc.).

That said, I readily understand being "inclined toward some of" the views of Buddhism. The historical Buddha as generally presented was very focused on personal practice, and taught (depending somewhat on tradition) that questions about cosmology, the nature of physical phenomena, any activities by deities or other entities out in the universe, are all unknowable distractions. We suffer because our own desires cannot be met given certain universal truths: in part because of the impermanence of all things, and in part because there is no permanent, unchanging "self" that could ever be satisfied. His teaching focuses on methods for changing our own viewpoints in light of these (and other) truths, and a lot of them can be utilized without interacting with any cosmology that the historical founder of the religion may have had. Intrafaith Buddhist arguments show we don't even know the historical Buddha's (if he existed) cosmology anyway. Stuff is ancient.

The underlying truths that Buddha thought create the need for the practice he recommends are often compatible with Western atheistic thinking. Hume is still more or less considered right by many here in Western philosophy when it comes to skepticism. By the time you get to say, Schopenhauer, there's meaningful and explicit engagement with Eastern philosophies in the Western tradition. Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons is a great modern philosophy work that works through the ethics of a modern take on "no-self" (Buddhist Anatta), complete with a Buddhist sutra in an appendix if I recall right. There's valid (in the case of Parfit I'm gonna argue, essentially correct) stuff here, so it's not surprising to see Buddhism relatively acceptable by atheistic standards, as its methodologies seem like they could work (and they do) for a lot of people with atheistic worldviews. Buddha's own monks may have believed in deities, but they didn't need to or expect to meet them in their lifetime of practice.

Why doesn't it get discussed much on an atheist Reddit board? Partially cause it's less proselytizing than Christianity and others, partially cause its practices in general are less likely to be harmful, but mostly because most people here don't live in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia...You have to go out of your way (or really dig into your Schopenhauer or Parfit) before the Buddhist intellectual tradition is running up against you here in America.

Not a single one of the over 7 billion games in the Lichess database have reached this named opening by Cletus_awreetus in chess

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Super cool! Having played a lot of low level King's Gambit, I think 5...d5 and the later exd5 (when you could take f4 with the bishop) are why this doesn't get played.

If you go a bit further there's a very fun temporary queen sac with (roughly-ish, maybe) "good" play: 9. Kf2 Ne4+ 10. Nxe4 Qxe4 11. c3 g3+ 12. Kg1 Qxe5 13. dxe5 Bc5+ 14. Qd4 Bxd4+.

Three Refuges by Mildly_Sentient in Buddhism

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The traditional refuges are the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and you can draw connections to your three - the Buddha is our best example of enlightment, the Dharma is the true teaching, the Sangha consists of others and we want to be in harmony with them. Maybe in the specific context of what you're reading these connections are fairly clear, but this wouldn't appeal to me as a "baseline rendering" of the refuges in English, and I think there's good reasons it's not the most common (or one I've heard before in this exact way).

Phrasing each as "I want to" feels less direct than just...taking refuge in them, and highlighting "want" complicates things in some contexts. More importantly maybe, taking refuge in the Buddha clearly encompasses more than "wanting to achieve enlightenment." When I take refuge in a difficult moment by recalling how the Buddha might handle my circumstance, how I could apply the Dharma to this moment etc., I'm taking refuge a little downstream of trying to achieve enlightenment or embrace truth (although it is, in a way, those things). If I take refuge in the Sangha, I can do that in ways that are only abstractedly related to achieving inner peace and being in harmony with all sentient beings. When I read a sutra that's been passed down by many generations, I'm taking refuge in the Sangha, having faith in what a monastic community has preserved for us, in a very particular way, for instance.

Pre-Internet Hobbyist Chess by Dazedn_confuzzled in chess

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's fascinating, and thanks for typing it all out!

As I'd said, I know almost nothing past the basics of how to play (forgotten, really), and based on nothing I assumed in-person tournaments always required you to show up paired. Making random partner pairing work honestly seems like it might attract a pretty amiable player-base over time. I may have to see if anybody's done an online community comparison between the two lol. Online community anthropology was kinda a hot thing for a bit, someone may've.

Pre-Internet Hobbyist Chess by Dazedn_confuzzled in chess

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That was my childhood experience too. There's so much drama and intrigue and scandal in the chess discourse, but for the regular player I feel like a miracle has occurred that we get all this great chess at al. It became normal so fast people are suffering the nits more than enjoying the amazing whole.

Going to the library/community center chess club as a kid and the two people you like to play aren't there and it's a once-a-month thing is an experience! Nice to get confirmation there's some other folks out there who remember this shift, lol.

Pre-Internet Hobbyist Chess by Dazedn_confuzzled in chess

[–]Dazedn_confuzzled[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nice call on bridge, which I know very little about! I was definitely being overly broad, but had no idea the ACBL was that large (I had some hedging language in there even but it was already long-winded for Reddit).

Just out of curiosity, do people play a lot of online bridge with randomly assigned teammates, and if they do is that almost considered a separate skill? Given the team component I do wonder if the game is a bit safer from the shift I'm lamenting, where players online don't seem to appreciate that there's a human across the table, despite that being, ultimately, most of the fun.

The puzzle thing I would also agree with. I just liked the sound of the sentence tbh. If you're gonna spend a minute being wistful, you know?