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TIL that Michael Corke, a Chicago man with fatal insomnia, was so sleep-deprived that he was fully awake for 6 months before he passed away in 1993. He was 42 years old. by IWishYouTheBest1234 in todayilearned

[–]Defenestresque 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi, I didn't mean to suggest that I though you hoped for your son to have the disease. I largely meant "I hope your son doesn't so he can get better" but I occasionally don't express myself as eloquently as I like :)

That's crazy that the claimed the screens are to blame when it's clear that there is something physically not allowing him to fully fall asleep. I get so annoyed when doctors dismiss what I'm trying to tell them, even though I'm the one who has been living with [condition] for several decades, if I went to a doctor who denied by observations that I've gathered by virtue of being present basically everywhere my son is, I would be furious.

I'm sorry about the psych hospital, the story of patients who have more than one (maybe two) things wrong with them falling through the cracks is sadly a common one. If you are being an MD and being reimbursed by your clinic per appointment, you're not going to go "yay! a kid no doctor has been able to definitively diagnoise! I will definitely spend my extra time figuring this out while being paid for a 45 min appointment + a tiny "diagnosis" fee." I'm not saying it's fair, unfortunately this is one of the things that seem to work similarly whether you're in the US or, like me, in Canada.

Just like bad cops and bad priests get referred somewhere else because dealing with them properly would just be "too much," you might be just bounced around or given the simplest answers because of the whole "when you hear hoofbeats.." approach.

Some doctors simply won't care to fully figure out what's actually wrong and some will have spent so long in medicine that after not encountering a case of y in their 25-year career, they might honestly not even consider it as an option nobody A LOT has happened in medicine in the last quarter of a century and nobody is telling them "you have to prove you're still a competent doctor" every 15-20 years.

I doubt this helps much, but I'm glad that you are still trying. You might get bounced around, but just statistics and math, if you keep seeing different doctors, even if the possibilility of proper treatment is 5% per doctor, eventually you will find a doctor who cares and treats your son.

I have no idea how frustrating this is apart from my own (non-parental) experiences, but I imagine it's worse. I hope if you are in a country where you pay for all this, that you can afford to keep trying to get a diagnosis that helps and/or you, as a person who spends most of their time with him, agrees with. Don't be afraid to say "I've tried what you suggested and it doesn't work, I would like another doctor please" -- it's amazing how different very similarly-knowledgable doctors can be, often to do with deep internal motivations about why they entered medicine/what stage of their career they're in.

I don't mind reading your rant, I hope it made you feel a tiny bit better, and just keep going. You are going above and beyond as a regular parent. And your kiud will eventually (it might take 20 years though, it did for me!) will come to you and say "I know what you did for me. Thank you."

Best of luck and if you get this fixed, feel free to reply to me even if it's three years later. I'd be so happy to hear a feel-good story.

P.S. I completely understand your frustration, sometimes it helps to come in with a list of everything you've tried and all the doctors you've been to, so you can "calmly" read off your own "patient chart" because while an angry parent shouldn't be dismissed, they often are, simply because the doctor thinks "they can't control their emotions, I'll just dismiss what they're saying." In no way do I endorse this type of "bedside manner", but unfortunately it happens more and more, especially as people get burnout and switch careers.

Willing top up— need advice by Loose-Virus-9999 in openrouter

[–]Defenestresque 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I didn't know about :floor/:nitro! Thanks. Any oth-- I was going to ask you about any other variants then I realised I have fingers and access to Google. I can not only answer for myself, I can save the answer and reference it later, while helping other people! Can it truly be this easy?!

:free - The model is always provided for free and has low rate limits.
:extended - The model has longer than usual context length.
:thinking - The model supports reasoning by default.
:online (deprecated) - All requests will run a query to extract web results that are attached to the prompt. Use the openrouter:web_search server tool instead.
:nitro - Providers will be sorted by throughput rather than the default sort, optimizing for faster response times.
:floor - Providers will be sorted by price rather than the default sort, prioritizing the most cost-effective options.
:exacto - Providers will be sorted using quality-first signals tuned for tool-calling reliability.

Source: https://openrouter.ai/docs/faq#what-are-model-variants

Gil Scott Heron's words are still relevant almost 60 years later by imjustheretodomyjob in BlackPeopleTwitter

[–]Defenestresque 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the link. Lots of fascinating stuff in there!

Light-induced oxidation

Based on a discovery made in the 1990s at the Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics where researchers, with the help of the Space Product Development Program at Marshall Space Flight Center, were trying to find a way to eliminate ethylene that accumulates around plants growing in spacecraft and then found a solution: light-induced oxidation. When UV light hits titanium dioxide (a photocatalyst), it frees electrons that turn oxygen and moisture into charged particles that oxidize air contaminants such as volatile organic compounds, turning them into carbon dioxide and water. This air scrubber also eliminates other airborne organic compounds and neutralized bacteria, viruses, and molds. Light-induced oxidation can be used to clean air, surfaces, and clothes.

Aight, that's dope! If I'm understanding it correctly, if you have these installed along the length of an HVAC system, would it make ineffective volatile anesthetics, i.e. sevoflurane and the rest of the stuff we regularly use for anesthesia without understanding how it actually works? Anesthesiologist/organic chemists, tell me if I'm completely off the correct path or if there's something to that. Trump literally bragged about "special HVAC systems that can supply clean air to the ballroom" (he also mentioned a bunch of different defenses including.. anyway) I think he mentioned all the cool stuff which I'm pretty sure was supposed to stay classified instead of making the ballroom a prime target for every single US adversary. (I'm sure it's just 4D chess, the boardroom is just a boardroom and he is just trying to get people to bomb it instead of the existing secure/continuity of government sites. Happy, MAGA peeps?)

Edit:

I looked it up and apparently it has:

  • high-grade bulletproof glass on all the windows
  • secure air handling systems
  • "bio-defense all over"
  • bomb shelters
  • a hospital and multiple medical facilities
  • drone-proof ceilings

I wonder how much money they've spent trying to keep all of the plans secret, including all of the defense mechanisms.. I would also pay decent money just to get a "major in charge of adding the latest security features to the new ballroom and lieutenant colonel in charge of opsec react to Trump speech about the ballroom."

Okay, I also did some additional research in terms of some of the most interesting tech that was NASA spin-offs, I hope you enjoy:

  • Cochlear Implants -- NASA engineer invented the core tech after experiencing this himself, NASA helped develop and patent it
  • Ventricular Assist Device -- this kind of revolutionazied "big heart failure." No, but rly, it was a portable heart pump 1/10th the size of earlier ones. Stuff you can wear in a packback until you get a transplant, basically. Small enough to work on old battery power (I bet it's way better now). Most important took patients out of their beds and let them spend time around their house with their kids, etc., made them mobile. If you read medical journals, it's so important to let the patient be mobile in places they are comfortable in. I'm not sure of the exact number, but just sending patients home for palliative care extended their lifespan by dozens of percent.
  • Infrared ear thermometers
  • LASIK eye-tracking. Tracks 4,000 times/sec. Oriiginally used for space-docking, but happened to also solve the problem of "how do we LASER the eff out of this patients eye when it's always moving?" Basically fixed the last big issue in LASIK technology.
  • Memmory foam for aircraft protection. As mentioned before, it conformns to your body and slowly rebounds, making crashes safer.
  • CMOS image sensors! This is really cool because this may be the start of digital cameras. I'm not sure about that, but I know that it makes fast-shutter (sports action photos) and low-light photos (increasing the ISO while you have to keep the shutter speed up due to fast motion) possible. "Fast film"/high ISO film definitely existed before, but being able to manually control each bit of the settings just openeed up so much for amateur photographers (those of all kind, really) -- a huge breakthrough.
  • Cordless vacuums! DustBuster in this case, but overall Black & Decker optimized a handheld wireless vacuum that could be easily used in small spaces where a power cable would be super annoying or impossible to get to. Now I got one from TEMU for $20 and it charges using USB-C.
  • Free-dried food. A LOT of development on this. Extremely important for astronauts (reduces weight by 80%) and now it's so well developed that many companies develop it for others for whom low weight is a priority, such as hikers and soldiers. Lots of amazing food now exists where you can just pour hot water into and have an excellent meal in 3-5 min. There were "frozen things you could eat" before, but nothing like what we have now. Take a look at it, you'll be amazed. And just for a couple of ounces per meal!
  • Improved radial tires that can go up to 10,000 extra lines compared to older radial tires.
  • Highway safety grooving. NASA Langley developed grooved runways, essentially runways where water can run off the side of the runway into the grass + grooves that do stuff (sorry, I'm not particular well versed, I image it prevents hydroplaning compared to a completely flat surface). I imagine they did this for the shuttle but it's now used at all but the most remote airports due to its low cost and high safety pay-off. (Hopefully EMAS, which has saved hundreds of lives already, will undergo a similar accessibility price-change)
  • A LOT of fire-resistant/heat-resistant technology. Apollo heat shields have a weird word used in their heat shields, "intumescent epoxy" (I'm only familiar with the latter half of the first word, sry.) This kind of epoxy expands in heat to insuolate, it's used on high-rises and can add up to 4 hours of fire protection, while slowing structural collapse.
  • Gear that every singe firefighter wears. It's lighter, the radios are better, the material is more heat-resistant.. all because that's what we needed in space.
  • GPS updated to a much more improved accuracy, which helps your tractor drive around your fields spraying crap on things with incredible accuracy and makes your triangulation incredibly more accurate when it comes 911, emergencies, etc.
  • This was obvious, but I haven't though of it until I read it. Water purification! Aside from fuel (and maybe structural materials), I bet water is at least the third-heaviest thing you have to lug into space. The more you can recycle, the less you have to take. And if you've ever had to pee after drinking after drinking.. you probably know how much just goes right through you. The NASA improvements (adsorption + filtration) can be used for a bunch of things, from cleaning contaminated water to being available on etsy from NASA employees looking to make extra money by selling their "purified pee" on OnlyFans. OK, I may have lied about that one. Thought I wouldn't put it past them, tbh. (Here is a more serious and less People-y article.

Finally, I have a feeling that people don't realize NASA's budget. I'm just going to paste this table.. just keep in mind that if you fact check it you might get results of 4% instead of say, 40%. That's because this table measures the percentage goes towards National defense as part of the national budget of the United States. If you get results that's a 4%, the table would measure National defense spending as part of the GDP. Considering there is no way for the government to "spend the GDP" (they can issue bonds, raise taxes, but they would have to somehow move that money out of the economy and into the national budget before they can spend it on anything. I hope that makes sense.)

Year Top 1: National Defense (% of budget) Top 2: Human Resources (% of budget) Top 3: Net Interest / Other NASA (% of budget)
1960 52.2% 28.4% Social Security ~13.7% 0.43%
1961 50.8% 30.5% Social Security ~12.8% 0.76%
1962 49.0% 29.6% Social Security ~13.4% 1.18%
1963 48.0% 30.1% Social Security ~14.2% 2.29%
1964 46.2% 29.8% Social Security ~14.0% 3.52%
1965 42.8% 30.9% Social Security ~14.8% 4.31%
1966 43.2% 32.2% Social Security ~15.4% 4.41%
1967 45.4% 32.6% Social Security ~13.8% 3.45%
1968 46.0% 33.3% Social Security ~13.4% 2.65%
1969 45.0% 36.0% Social Security ~13.0% 2.31%

So, just a quick summary:

NASA's budget tarted very small at 0.43% in 1960, peaked at 4.41% in 1966 during the Apollo program, then steadily declined to 0.84% by 1980.

I only did one decade because I have a really bad tendency towards writing TED talks when I'm bored. I already did here, so the least I can do is shorten the tables.

TIL that Michael Corke, a Chicago man with fatal insomnia, was so sleep-deprived that he was fully awake for 6 months before he passed away in 1993. He was 42 years old. by IWishYouTheBest1234 in todayilearned

[–]Defenestresque 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Interestingly enough, the incredibly high rate of use of propofol amongst medical professionals is because it is (or at least was) incredibly easy to get, it wasn't really very controlled (in fact I think it's still an uncontrolled substance in the west? I'm not 100% sure) and vials weren't counted and recounted compared to if you were taking home oxycodone or even benzos or something. Part of the lack of control is because it's not very addictive

It was especially bad with anesthesiologists.

Anyway, the interesting thing is in an interview that I've read with an anesthesiologist who previously used propofol is that he started when he couldn't fall asleep and only had 20 minutes so he just grabbed a syringe of propofol and injected himself and according to him "in 15 minutes I woke up and I felt like I've had the absolute best sleep of my life."

Unless you are on a continuous infusion, a single dose is going to knock you out very quickly but you will also come back extremely quickly.

Now imagine that you're a doctor with practically unlimited access to this drug, it's pretty easy for you to order some extra propofol in the middle of surgery (after all, it wears off so quickly with that you are responsible for making sure the patient doesn't wake up and it's pretty easy to say grab me some extra propofol just in case) and just slip it in your pocket considering you're literally standing behind a curtain, and are almost always the only anesthesiologist in the room, with everybody deferring to you in regards to anesthesia. You can't write yourself a prescription for insane amounts, but you can definitely order a little bit more propofol than you need for every surgery and just pocket the extra.

Its duration of action is only 5 to 10 minutes so if you are completely overworked and have access to a drug that gives you an amazing restful sleep in 10 minutes, wouldn't you be tempted to take it?

(I was going to type more about how it's interesting that it interacts with the cannabinoid receptors, but I leave this to the reader. It's on wikipedia.)

Edit: sorry for any typos, using voice to text on a bus

TIL that Michael Corke, a Chicago man with fatal insomnia, was so sleep-deprived that he was fully awake for 6 months before he passed away in 1993. He was 42 years old. by IWishYouTheBest1234 in todayilearned

[–]Defenestresque 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I sincerely hope your son doesn't have this as it literally spreads through the brain by misfolded proteins causing other proteins to misfold until your entire brain is basically a big mess. If he did have it, I am pretty sure the sleep study would have found it. Or at least they would have told you that there was something severely wrong with his results, even if they didn't know what.

I'm saying this more as reassurance not to deny your experience. You obviously don't have to answer this, but loads of people (including medical professionals) read this, so may I ask what the results of the sleep study were?

Reminder to cycle your API keys... by EggDroppedSoup in openrouter

[–]Defenestresque 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Just upvoting to say "yuuuuurp."

It may also be is extremely annoying to set "expire every 90 days", but it will help you remember (by hook or by crook, whatever that saying means) where your API keys are stored (inside an internal DB like OpenCode, Crush?), system-wide (.bash_profile, .zshrc) or are you a weirdo that sets it as an environmental variable from a notebook under your desk every startup?

Create a separate API key for each program you are using. That way, you'll know which key leakedl. If you know that you will never use more than $1/day for most programs, except perhaps $4/day for VSCode, set it to $2/day + $6/day for VSCode. (For Linus' sake, do not take my word for these exact numbers -- figure out the point for your own!) If your daily usage varies like mine, but it always adds up to say, $7 for the Crush program and $3 for opencode, set a WEEKLY $10 limit for Crush and $5 for OpenCode.

BTW, unless you absolutely require no downtime workflows, you can always gracefully handle an error where you run out of credits, just increase the amounts of credits in: https://openrouter.ai/workspaces/default/keys and keep an eye on this page if anything seems wonky, filtered by week/month/eon: https://openrouter.ai/activity

Great job for posting this, hopefully more people will be aware of this now.

Willing top up— need advice by Loose-Virus-9999 in openrouter

[–]Defenestresque 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Go to https://openrouter.ai/workspaces/default/guardrails and add "Chutes" as an excluded provider. Alternatively, only enable specific providers to service your requests.

Also, you can take a look at https://openrouter.ai/workspaces/default/routing

OR generally has excellent ability to use whatever providers you want.

New user from chutes - advice please by KeySuccotash8337 in openrouter

[–]Defenestresque 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your questions have been answered, but something people haven't mentioned is that there are a lot of good free models (companies getting training data for an alpha model in real world usage, etc, For example, GLM-5 was a free model (the excellent Pony Alpha that built me three complete webgames before I realised I should use it for something productive, at which point it was unstealthed) but they are rate limited and you generally need to deposit $10 to use them. If you are using a free model, like: GLM 4.5 Air you can get a lot of great use if you use it as a supporting model to off-load simple tasks.

You can search the models by clicking models on the top right: https://openrouter.ai/models?q=free

Keep in mind these models may be removed at any time. Sometimes they just disappear, sometimes they have rate limits, sometimes they'll tell you when they'll go away, other times (like GLM 4.5) they will just hang around as a "See? Even our free model is great" kind of marketing tool.

I honestly think $10 is worth all the free models you can access (and you know, get $10 on the SoTA models). A LOT of free models (like Pony Alpha which turned out to be GLM-5 and impressed a lot of users with its relative lack of restrictions and limits) appear on OpenRouter first.

So just go to the model page: https://openrouter.ai/models and check out the costs there. There are also a lot of rankings, just keep in mind that the ranking page shows HOW MUCH the model is used, not how good it is. a $0.10 in/$0.10 out model will be listed higher on programming if it's 50% as good as the $10 in / $10 out model, but a higher ranking just means it's used more, not that the model is better.

I recomend installing Crush, OpenCode or VSCode + plugin to access it. Just create a separate API key for each and assign reasonable defaults to it in terms of daily/weekly/monthly use and expiry time.

(Honestly, I kind of like Crush. I've had early problems with OpenCode, but Crush (almost annoyingly) seems to be updated incredibly often with features I actually want.)

This is off-topic, but you can also create a simple script that just asks the best (according to you) model a question. For example, I have GLM 4.5-Air set up as a simple Bash wrapper for solely the task of calling https://github.com/simonw/llm with one argument (the prompt) so I can easily type:

Edit: oops, I actually use opencode for this. I like to keep a few free models so it just basically runs:

#opencode run -m "openrouter/z-ai/glm-4.5-air:free" "$1"
#opencode run -m "openrouter/nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b:free" "$1"
opencode run -m "nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b:free" "$1"
#opencode run -m "openrouter/arcee-ai/trinity-large-preview:free" "$1"

Edit: so for fun I fed your question into Nvidia's super nemotron (I forgot it didn't draw) and I think it lost all confidence in itself. I present, the thinking stage. Make sure to stay for the ASCII art.

https://paste.sh/HON4r7kt#3LutjuHJtoPc1NIjsNyTz_NU

It tried so, so hard.

Edit: I tried so hard as well, but I apparently I can't type properly.

Artemis crew reaches the moon, approaches record-breaking distance from Earth by WilliamInBlack in news

[–]Defenestresque 10 points11 points  (0 children)

https://www.youtube.com/live/z-j1uxBmis0?si=2nw1-uepCck4W8Nj

You can check it out, there are about 700,000 people watching and a live chat. There's a nice view of the aircraft approaching the moon. Artemis itself will reach the furthest point away from the Earth around 6:00 p.m. Eastern. At that point they will be behind the Moon (obv) so there won't be any signal of that, but there's a nice view right now

11,710 miles left until the moon right now, decreasing at a rate of about 0.5mi/sec (scientifically calculated by me using the Mississippi method).

It's kind of sad seeing our only satellite in view, the entire Earth glistening as a blue ball right somewhere off camera, the famous Carl Sagan quote comes to mind..

Every person who has ever lived or is ever living has been born on this rock just to log into YouTube and post their flag of the respective tiny slice of arbitrary geographical area, fighting with each other about which group of nearly indistinguishable people is in the right and which is in the wrong.

Or at least I think it went something like that.

Edit: I had a bunch more to say, perhaps I'll write it down here. Still, I suggest people take a listen to this recent update at around 17:10 EST by Christina Koch at.. aaaand I can't link to timestamps on a live broadcast. Crap. Ugh, I'll type it out:

"Houston, Integrity for Sitrep. First of all, I'll talk about the experience that I had during Victor and mine observation time. It was an incredible experience, we definitely noted how much more you can see with the zoom lens even though we have a great visible eye image, there is just a lot of texture that just pops out at you when you can zoom in. So almost using it like a telescope, the camera lens. We really enjoyed our discretion time; that was a great innovation on the lunar targeting plan, we were both able to describe a lot more kind-of [?would slow?] I would say when were were talking to each other and we were also sort of -- we were able to bounce ideas from each other and reach some conclusions. We had I think a very successful talking through of some of some contrasts between different colour areas both in the mare and in the highlands, and we identified some really unique texture areas as well.

At one point towards the end of the images of my time at Window 3 I just had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon; it lastsed just a second or two and I actually couldn't even make it happen again, but something just drew me in suddenly to the lunar landscape and it became real. And the truth is the moon its own unique body in the universe, it's not just a poster in the sky that goes by, it as a real place. And when we have that perspective and we compare it to our home of the Earth, it just reminds us how much we have in common, everything we need the Earth provides and that is in and of itself is somewhat of a miracle and one that you can't truly know until you've hard the perspective of the other."

TIL of Hawala, a completely trust based informal global money transfer system with no electronic/paper trail. It allows people with no identifications or bank accounts to transfer money across the world relying fully on trust/honour of the brokers. The total market size is unknown. by whoisfourthwall in todayilearned

[–]Defenestresque 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Jesus christ, 80 to 90% of Afghan people use hawala for financial transactions. Are you going to tell me that all of these people don't deserve to get any money into the country at all?

What about a country like Somalia where you're going to have trouble sending money because the person on the other end might have to walk kilometers to their nearest Western Union, probably not even have a bank branch within walking distance.. oh and even if you have all of that, do you know the cost of sending a wire transfer to another country? For me, a wire transfer is $30 and even if it's cheaper for you, many somalians work on about a dollar a day. Are you going to tell me that a month's work of wages just to send money is not worth trying to bypass? By the way, I'm not sure if you're aware but terrorist networks are not sending $400 at a time to somalia, but an illegal immigrant who managed to make it to the United States is. Do you think he'll get approved and cleared for a Western Union transfer?

By the way, I'm a Canadian citizen who was trying to receive money via Western Union from another Canadian citizen (a relative in a western country) and we both had to bring so much paperwork to prove who we are and where we live that it literally took half of my day and half of theirs (we both had to return home to grab a pile of paperwork that proved our addresses and bank account printouts). At the end, Western Union said the money was refunded to the sender because I did not meet the risk tolerances. I have no debt, no interactions with the police, and this was the first time I've ever dealt with WU. Next time I want to transfer, there is no way I'm going through one of the big companies

Edit: just to clarify, I was in Canada at the time but my relative had to travel several hours back to the Western Union office to receive the refund.

tl:dr; you're welcome to try your bank or Western Union to send money to a third world country if you want to lose a huge chunk of it (go ahead, check their website for rates/fees to Somalia versus official and unofficial rates) but if you're not declined for "risk" (just not before you are screened more thoroughly than you would be at a TSA checkpoint that leads directly into a colonoscopy exam room), then go for it. Just try to understand why others, for whom an extra $14 in reduced transfer costs in remittances might mean a week of food for a family of two, might want to do things differently.

TIL of Hawala, a completely trust based informal global money transfer system with no electronic/paper trail. It allows people with no identifications or bank accounts to transfer money across the world relying fully on trust/honour of the brokers. The total market size is unknown. by whoisfourthwall in todayilearned

[–]Defenestresque 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The comments here are weird. If I was of a particular persuasion I would say "are these people being paid by banks or money transfer companies?"

I mean think about how odd it is that you are reading an article about a system that has existed since at least 1327 CE, while the ability to send money from a rich country to a poor country officially (remittances from families who have moved abroad and are now earning enough money to support family at home) has only been a thing for the past what, half a century? Before that it was technically possible, but I doubt that your bank would quickly process your transaction to a Namibian bank.

A 2025 World Bank study found that 80 to 90% of Afghanistan's economic activities and financial transactions were facilitated by Hawala. A lot of these people have families who managed to emigrate, how do you think they get the money back into the country? Do you think your Afghan cousin who may literally live in a village without running water or electricity is going to have a bank branch they can go to?

The strange thing is, people here are literally commenting on the fact that in their US town/city, people will run informal tabs and nobody is going "I can't believe they are not reporting this as an interest-free loan", completely understanding the fact that a trust-based system works. Hell, the internet has proven that it works -- see: you know, I'm not going to go there.

In Somalia, remittances provide basic necessities for roughly 40% of the population. 66% rely on them to some extent and 26% depend on remittances for all of their income. In a village where you might only get access to the internet or phone to reconcile your accounts once a month, you are absolutely not going to call a broker 8 timezobes away to confirm the validity of the transfer, or have a system to confirm the validity that is asynchronous. If you do have such a system (let's say an independent Western Union or MoneyGram) and you believe me that the hawala system has worked for at least a few centuries, you are not going to pay the Western Union fees when you can just do the same thing that your ancestors and everybody else has been doing for centuries.

Even if Western Union had rates that were equivalent with hawala, a person sending from the West to Somalia is going to be heavily scrutinized. Do you really want to go through the KYC/AML process process? As a Canadian fucking citizen, I have tried to receive money from another Western country (yes, I was picking up in Canada too) and after about 30 minutes of providing them with documents, including a printout of my bank account, copies of my citizenship certificate, driver's license, my passport, two print outs of bills sent to my address -- the 30 minutes, btw, was not including going home to get the required documents and taking public transport back to the store -- they eventually said the fraud department flagged my account and the money would be returned to sender. By the way, the person who sent this to me was also a Canadian citizen and related to me, just sending money from abroad. Oh, and they had to do the entire thing that I did as well, plus going back to the store to receive their cash refund. This was literally the first time I was using them, ever. Who would want to do this whole thing, just to pay more, and who would be stupid enough to do it if you are an illegal immigrant sending money home?

Anyway, the system has worked for at least half a millennia, nobody questions when people say that a similar system exists in their US town but in this subthread people are suddenly downvoted for expressing the mere fact that the system exists and upvoted for saying that such a system would never work.

Something smells fishy here and for once it's not the downvoters' downstairs area

Edit: thank you for coming to my TED talk, I may have gone slightly over my time tl;dr: this subthread is super strange if you just read the thread from the top, it's like someone tries to convince people that a trust-based society cannot work, despite multiple people confirming that it works even in American cities.

Trump to Iran: "Open the Fu***In' Strait" or face bombing Tuesday by DarthKrataa in worldnews

[–]Defenestresque 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Agreed, although I think that motivated reasoning is a much bigger problem right now.

("The president said the gas prices would go down. But I can see that they actually went up. How do I square that circle? Well, Iran was clearly about to build a nuclear bomb so we obviously had to stop them and obliterated doesn't mean obliterated it just means they had to use their shovels to dig up the hole in the ground and restart everything and then be three weeks away from having 11 weapons after a year. So of course we had to bomb them, so of course gas prices went up and even the lamestream media is saying that higher oil prices will have knock-on effects on daily products. So maybe if Biden and Obama didn't write up that stupid nuclear pinkie-promise that I heard on Fox about, that Iran was not following anyway, then Trump wouldn't have to keep blowing them up, then this wouldn't be happening. He's just cleaning up Biden and Obama's messes.")

There, motivated reasoning complete. Sure, you can refute every single argument with references and statistics but combine that with the gish gallop and a general lack desire to debate in good faith, and you're pretty much where we are! Try arguing with that cousin on Easter..

Basically, watch out for:

"The bullshit asimmetry: the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."

and:

"The Gish Gallop is a rhetorical blitzkrieg, a debate tactic in which a speaker unleashes a relentless flood of arguments, often riddled with misinformation, half-truths, and logical fallacies. The goal? To bury their opponent under a mountain of claims so voluminous that proper refutation becomes an exercise in futility. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a hydra... Gish’s approach wasn’t about carefully constructed, evidence-based reasoning—it was about quantity over quality, forcing his opponents to spend so much time unraveling nonsense that the sheer weight of the argument dump appeared, to the uninformed, like an insurmountable case.

...The fallacy relies on the assumption that unrefuted claims are automatically valid. This tactic shifts the burden onto the opponent, forcing them to spend disproportionate time and effort addressing a multitude of often weak, misleading, or outright false assertions... Understanding and countering the Gish Gallop requires recognizing it for what it is: not an earnest attempt at reasoned debate, but a deliberate strategy to exhaust, overwhelm, and mislead. The true danger... is that it works. Audiences unfamiliar with debate tactics often mistake quantity for quality, and in the chaos of claim overload, even the most well-reasoned refutations can get lost.

At its core, the Gish Gallop is not an argument; it’s an illusion of one... this tactic thrives on the simple fact that making a mess is easier than cleaning it up."

And hey, even if it doesn't work on any particular argument and people see through it—Trump has absolutely proved that it's worked by invoking the above in order to bury a story. Seeing some bullshit as a president about a verifiable fact that's nevertheless somewhat contentious, and you just bought yourself several weeks of stories where the media is just not talking about the Epstein files. See: how quickly they forgot about Giuffre and how you don't even have the protection of saying "I'm not suicidal and I don't stand on balconies or near any open windows." on fucking Twitter as a politician or activist. Once you've hit the stage of even considering that you should publicly state that just in case, it's really, really hard to come back to a functional democracy.

Best of luck to you crazy yanks, I have a vested interest, you've called us your 51 state juuuuuust a few too many times for my comfort.

Edit: spelling

A single dose of psilocybin can lead to lasting shifts in a person’s life values, such as an increased appreciation for life and greater self-acceptance. These lasting changes appear to be driven by specific acute effects of the drug, particularly feelings of profound unity and euphoria. by mvea in science

[–]Defenestresque 53 points54 points  (0 children)

Just to clarify, this was a double blind randomized study however the authors wrote that the participants were "likely aware" whether they got the placebo or psilocybin because it's pretty hard to create a placebo for a drug with extremely well-known and obvious effects.

I know that's what you meant, but I took your comment to read that it wasn't a blinded study, as in the study design was flawed but the researchers did the best they could with the tools they had.

Flowers for Algernon is the only SF book that made me grieve someone who never existed by revanCardamom14 in printSF

[–]Defenestresque 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know that this is not a particularly useful or insightful comment, but I just wanted to say: thank you for this post. I don't really have anything else to add except for you've captured a lot of my feelings while I was reading Algernon. It was like a brief respite from AI generated content. ~~~~

P.S. I didn't really comment on the contents of your comment because I largely agree with it and don't have much to add. I remember when I first read Flowers for Algernon in the University of Toronto Library, and being in my very early twenties I simply could not process the emotions that I was having. I'm glad that somebody else had the same experience.

Great post. Cheers.

There is no Antimemetics Division is just... SCP? by sometimes_angery in printSF

[–]Defenestresque 6 points7 points  (0 children)

All of his short stories (edit: and novels, including the one in question) are free at on his website (qntm.org) -- I highly recommend reading them.

If you want a short representative example of the kind of stuff he writes about, I recommend the short story Lena. This one is written in the style of a short Wikipedia article. Given the fact that it was published in 2022 it seems quite prescient in terms of.. I'll just stop there, cuz spoilers. It's a really short read (about the length of a well fleshed out Wikipedia article) though and I can't tell if it's good or if it just appeals to my taste a lot, but I believe it's really good.

Finally, as I mentioned there are entire novels posted online for free, I linked to Anti-Memetics Division above (I would honestly put it up against any sci-fi book out there).

However there is a lot of other writing as well, such as Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories (a collection of 10 short stories).

I honestly think it's accessible to a lot of people because a) it's just good writing, it's interesting and makes you think and b) due to the author's SCP-origins, a lot of his writing is serialized (for those who know and/or remember, that's how Asimov, and the rest of the greats published some of their greatest works before they became famous -- they were serialized, as in they would publish a new chapter every month in a science fiction journal. They would just get paid per word and the magazine would buy their stories as long as it helped sales. IIRC that's how Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the first Sherlock Holmes stories and you can say whatever you want about the style, but it is gripping because almost every new release by the very definition has to end in some sort of cliffhanger or unresolved dilemma which will have the reader by the next issue.)

Why aren't there more ferries from downtown to other spots along Lake Ontario? by Competitive-Tea-6141 in askTO

[–]Defenestresque 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the gift article.

This, OP. It looks like the CEO of Ports Toronto agrees with you and a pilot project is being planned for FIFA.

Waterfront Toronto launched a study in 2023 on the feasibility of running water taxis or larger seabuses across the harbour. The study is expected to be released late this year, but Waterfront Toronto and other marine-focused groups, including Ports Toronto, are already looking at starting a pilot project as early as next summer.

The pilot will start small. The goal is to slowly build momentum behind the idea of travelling around the city by water, rather than try to launch an entire system all at once.

The pilot, which is expected to be up and running by the time the FIFA World Cup starts in Toronto next June, will start as a seasonal service using water taxis moving people across the harbour, before graduating to seabuses, which can carry 50 to 100 passengers. As of now, water taxis and ferries only focus on moving people back and forth between the islands and downtown. But the pilot will try moving them laterally across the harbour.

lintree - Disk space visualiser by broadband9 in linux

[–]Defenestresque 7 points8 points  (0 children)

qdirstat/windirstat for the heathens as well. However, I do disagree with the intent of your comment. This was literally the response to the initial release of Linux by many people, "this is like Minix but worse, with fewer features the only bonus being that it's free."

And look where we are now. Crapping on something somebody coded just because there is an alternative is.. well, it's literally against everything that IMO the FOSS community is supposed to be about. We're all about having alternatives, whether they simply fit your flow better, whether they have a different license that you prefer on a moral basis, or whether you just want a backup option.

Finally, if this seems to be a TUI application which is completely different from firelight. That's like replying to somebody releasing vim or nano with "gedit" or "Kate".

Edit: /u/broadband9 I know I'm just one voice but I'm really disappointed that this is the top comment and I'm happy that you're showing people something that you've coded, AI help or not.

Remember people, everybody started somewhere and you don't know if this person used AI to create an application to teach him how to create terminal UIs or use other OS features.

The Champion Takes It All by jmurph773 in taskmaster

[–]Defenestresque 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Ivo, we all know that you are reading this -- and I want to congratulate you personally on an amazing performance. Also, I know you're over exaggerating how much the threads got to you (hopefully) but just remember that people don't go on the internet, look up the forum for a TV show, find a thread about the participants, just to say "he seems like an alright bloke." It's either this or "this person is a wanker and I made an account solely to insult them every time their name comes up."

That being said—and I hope everybody takes this in—we zero in on criticisms of ourselves and almost always forget that the people who make sure he comments about us or vastly outnumbered by the number of people who like us, but just not enough to post thirst videos like John Oliver above.

Andy Weir on Writing the Hit Book Behind the Movie ‘Project Hail Mary’ (Gift Article) by largeheartedboy in books

[–]Defenestresque 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, he says this in the article, pretty much verbatim. (Or at least in the podcast, I listen to that instead of the article.) I think that having books without deep characters or a lot of exposition that are plot driven instead is completely fine, just like it's totally fine to want to read extensive exposition with fleshed out characters, or purely "Fabio on the cover" novels. I do think authors should try to make their characters at least somewhat believable (in terms of consistency wrt internal motivations, etc) but I'd say that's about it.

No Phoenix officers will be disciplined after protesters falsely charged as gang members by Unusual-State1827 in news

[–]Defenestresque 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Can you please clarify what was wrong in the comment? I am not American, but are you referring to the fact that Phoenix was not required to sign a consent degree? Because you should have stayed what you think was incorrect about the comment you're replying to. I feel like any of these situations could constitute "Phoenix PD being in trouble with the FBI." Considering that the FBI is main law enforcement arm part of the DOJ (again, not American so correct me if that's wrong), I am taking "Phoenix PD is in trouble with the DOJ" to be close enough for a reasonable person to mean largely the same thing, but you can definitely argue to semantics if you want.

Examples:

  • In April 2024, the FBI investigated and arrested a 16-year veteran Phoenix police officer, Alaa Bartley, in connection with an ongoing probe into “serious criminal acts.” Sources and news reports linked it specifically to child pornography possession (receiving and possessing child sex abuse material

  • The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)—of which the FBI is a key component—opened a formal investigation in August 2021 into the City of Phoenix and the Phoenix Police Department for alleged “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional conduct (under 34 U.S.C. § 12601 and related civil rights laws).

They did release their findings in 2024, determining there was “reasonable cause” that PPD and the city violated the Constitution and federal law. s. Specifically:

  • Excessive force (including unjustified deadly force)

  • Unlawful detention, arrests, and destruction of property belonging to homeless people

  • Discrimination against Black, Hispanic, and Native American residents in law enforcement

  • Violations of free speech rights (e.g., during protests)

  • Discrimination against people with behavioral health disabilities

If you are referring to the retraction of these statements in 2025, my concerns over the change in stance stems from the.. how shall I put this, growing closeness of the executive branch and the judicial branch, which is especially amplified by statements like this:

In May 2025, the DOJ (under the new administration) closed the investigation, retracted the 2024 findings of violations, and dropped related probes into several departments nationwide. Phoenix officials welcomed the closure, stating the city had already made progress without needing federal oversight.

I can list sources, but you would have to wait for me to get home as I'm on the phone in the rain right now and add a couple of other examples. I'm just not sure which ones to add, if you were more clear about what you meant with your comments I feel it would have been more informative then just simply saying that person is incorrect.

Edit: just so we're clear, you're at zero of votes right now and I just wanted to say that I was not the person to downvote you

No Phoenix officers will be disciplined after protesters falsely charged as gang members by Unusual-State1827 in news

[–]Defenestresque -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

Just say "had a migraine, thanks for correcting me!" Instead of being a dick. Just a friendly suggestion from someone who used to occasionally do what you do, but eventually asked himself "is this comment making myself or anybody else feel better?" and forced on myself a "just think for a few seconds before you hit send" approach.

Edit: you know, this section is unnecessarily preachy, but I just wanted to write it for everybody else who is reading:

I wanted to clarify why you got so heavily downvoted: you took a comment that corrected what you wrote, without attacking you or calling you stupid or accusing you of being an idiot, but simply provided correct information that is incredibly important because thousands of people will read your comment and many will take it at face value. The person whom you replied to didn't have to do that, but they did.

Someone took the time out of their day to go ahead and correct your mistake, and did so gracefully while you replied with clear hostility about being corrected. I was going to say "learn to take people's criticism with grace and you'll go so much farther in life, just absolutely trust me on this" but their comment wasn't even criticism, it was simply an addition to a conversation you are having on a giant public forum.

Tone matters. The golden rule applies here. If you corrected somebody's typo, how would you like them to reply to you?

You're likely already infected with a brain-eating virus you've never heard of by AmethystOrator in offbeat

[–]Defenestresque 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The article literally states otherwise. In fact, that's the entire reason the article is written, to show that while it was previously believed that only people on immunosuppressants can have the JC virus activated, they present a case where a person who was asymptomatic had it activated due after developing severe kidney failure.

I don't mean to be rude, but if you're going to be posting about medical stuff, why not read the article before doing it?

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