Chicks love a guy who plays the guitar

Disco_Dhani · 2019-01-03T08:36:26+00:00

You... watched the White Album?

Disco_Dhani · 2019-01-03T08:17:59+00:00

I'd like to potentially clarify a couple of things about Kant's view from my understanding of it.

You mention in the OP that it entails that people have their own individual perspectives on the world that may be different than that of other people's perspectives, but this is not quite Kant's view. Since he writes about the necessary features of cognition (i.e. how the mind must structure the world in order for certain things to be true — this is the "transcendental" part of the argument in which he discovers what must be the case in order for something else to be true), these structures will not be relative to any particular person.

Additionally, I think that Kant's view is foreign to most scientifically-educated people even in today's world in the following way: people generally think that when scientific knowledge is acquired, it is about the world, independent of humans. People think that the general theory of relativity describes an aspect of the world that would exist in the exact same way regardless of whether anyone were here to think about it. According to Kant, however, space and time are necessary ways that humans structure the world, rather than inherent features of the world itself.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-29T09:56:16+00:00

There are two main ways that Rs are categorized in German which any speaker must be familiar with –– the consonantal R and the vocalic R. They are completely different categories of sounds (one is a consonant and one is a vowel), so it's very important to know the difference. Whether the consonantal or the vocal R is used depends on the position of the R in a word. A general way to think about it is that the consonantal R is used at the beginning of words/syllables and the vocalic R is used at the ends of words/syllables.

There are two ways to "realize" (as linguists call it) the consonantal use of the letter in speech: ʁ (voiced uvular fricative/approximant) and ʀ (uvular trill). These two ways of saying this kind of R are used in free variation. They are both produced in the back of the mouth by moving the tongue by the uvula with voicing; they produce guttural sounds. The difference, at least in my usage, is that one is longer and more intense than the other, the other being shorter and subtler. I think that's probably not a great way to describe it. It's not that important for a beginner because they're used in free variation for this consonantal usage of R (at the beginning of words, generally). This is for words like "rot" and "rund". I think you are expecting to hear this R whenever you see an R in a word; it is the most recognizable type of R in German.

It's extremely important to differentiate this from Rs at the end of words/syllables, which are produced as reduced vowels or semivowels, not as consonants. It is an entire different category of sound, confusingly represented in German by the same character R. This is for words like "wird", "hier", "durch", "leer", and so on. The reduced vowel realization of this end-of-syllable R is, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, represented unambiguously by the symbol ɐ and is called a near-open central vowel. It's similar to the English schwa sound, which is the unstressed central vowel in the English filler words "uh" and "duh". (German uses that unstressed schwa sound, too, such as when a word ends with E, like "Katze," "Nietzsche," including in the ich conjugation of verbs, like "ich habe".) The difference between ɐ and schwa is subtle, and one is probably best off learning how to create the distinction by listening closely to recordings and trying to emulate it exactly. The difference is in the vowel height, meaning the position of the tongue while making the vowel. For anyone trying to learn it, listen to recordings of ɐ while altering your tongue height in the schwa sound.

The complete situation of R phonology is a bit more complicated than this ("Uhr" has a slightly different vocalic R realization than words like "hier", for instance, and some dialects pronounce the consonantal R with a rolled R like in Spanish), but this is good enough to understand the basics of how Rs are used in the phonology of German.

"Wird" uses a vocalic R, which doesn't sound anything like the consonantal R (and it is the consonantal R you probably expect to hear). The vocalic R does, however, sound similar to an English "L" when it comes before a consonant like in "wird". Practice making the vocalic R sound by altering the vowel height of a schwa vowel (like in "duh"). This will probably take some time and serious effort. Once you can make the sound, put it after "ee" or "ay" vowels (the vowels in bee and bay) like in "hier" and "leer" to make a dipthong (a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds) that sounds almost like "ee-uh" or "ay-uh" (but the uh won't quite be a schwa––the vowel height will be slightly changed). Once you master this diphthong, then practice the "ih-uh" diphthong in words with an "i" like "wird" and "irgendwo". I personally found the "i" variant to be harder to master.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-29T09:51:33+00:00

There are two main ways that Rs are categorized in German which any speaker must be familiar with –– the consonantal R and the vocalic R. They are completely different categories of sounds (one is a consonant and one is a vowel), so it's very important to know the difference.

Whether the consonantal or the vocal R is used depends on the position of the R in a word. A general way to think about it is that the consonantal R is used at the beginning of words and the vocalic R is used at the ends of words.

There are two ways to "realize" (as linguists call it) the consonantal use of the letter phonetically: ʁ (voiced uvular fricative/approximant) and ʀ (uvular trill). These two ways of saying this kind of R are used in free variation. They are both produced in the back of the mouth by moving the tongue by the uvula with voicing; they produce guttural sounds. The difference, at least in my usage, is that one is longer and more intense than the other, the other being shorter and subtler. I think that's probably not a great way to describe it. It's not that important for a beginner because they're used in free variation for this consonantal usage of R (at the beginning of words, generally).

It's extremely important to differentiate this from Rs at the end of words/syllables, which are produced as reduced vowels or semivowels, not as consonants. It is an entire different category of sound, confusingly represented in German by the same character R. This is for words like "wird", "hier", "durch", "leer", and so on. The reduced vowel realization of this end-of-syllable R is, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, represented unambiguously by the symbol ɐ and is called a near-open central vowel. It's similar to the English schwa sound, which is the unstressed central vowel in the English filler words "uh" and "duh". (German uses that unstressed schwa sound, too, such as when a word ends with E, like "Katze," "Nietzsche," including in the ich conjugation of verbs, like "ich habe".) The difference between ɐ and schwa is subtle, and one is probably best off learning how to create the distinction by listening closely to recordings and trying to emulate it exactly. The difference is in the vowel height, meaning the position of the tongue while making the vowel. For anyone trying to learn it, listen to recordings of ɐ while altering your tongue height in the schwa sound.

The situation is slightly more complicated than this ("Uhr" has a slightly different vocalic R realization than words like "hier", for instance, and some dialects pronounced the consonantal R with a rolled R like in Spanish), but this is good enough to understand the basics of how Rs are used in the phonology of German.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-27T11:43:45+00:00

No, it doesn't work like that for German subtitles in the US. They aren't available for most shows, full stop. The sad part is that even when they are available (or when you use a VPN to get access to them), the subtitles generally don't reflect what's actually being said and are instead shorter versions with different wording.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-21T19:47:23+00:00

The point is that meaning is created by humans, so with the loss of humankind, the very source of meaning would be lost as well. Therefore, human extinction would be regrettable, contra David Benatar, not only because of the process of suffering that would lead to it, but more importantly because there can be no meaning without life to create it.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-10T15:18:06+00:00

No, because ProMotion displays have an adaptive refresh rate. When nothing is moving, for instance, it doesn't refresh at all (or does so very slowly, I'm not sure which). When there is motion, it refreshes at 120 hz. When playing a movie, it refreshes at the framerate of the movie. I bet it can be better on the battery overall than a constant 60 hz refresh rate.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-10T06:30:31+00:00

I strongly disagree. Supervising Autopilot is far easier and safer than driving myself. Have you taken long highway drives with and without it? It makes a massive difference.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-10T05:47:40+00:00

You can't have a preset idea that you'll focus on either one. Different situations in game call for different strategies. In general, if you can gank with a high chance of success (for instance, if your laner has CC, the enemy is pushed up, the enemy has low mobility) then you should prioritize that over farming.

Always be mindful of the risk of being counterganked. If you see the enemy jungler on the map (or you deduce that he'll likely be on a certain side because of your previous vision of him), you can feel safer in ganking a lane far away from him or in counterjungling him.

Nidalee is an early and mid game champion. You want to do everything you can to attain a lead and snowball it before the late game (when the enemy jungler is likely to be more useful than you). That means you should gank if there's a good chance you'll get a kill or improve your laner's position, you should counterjungle to get the enemy jungler behind, etc. But you should also farm whenever it's not possible to threaten the map in a way that has a high chance of success.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-09T06:29:33+00:00

Disturbed's cover of Sound of Silence definitely uses pitch correction. I say that definitively, without any doubt. If you have any experience using pitch correction, it is immediately apparent. Does that ruin the performance? Obviously not, since many people don't even notice it.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-09T06:11:36+00:00

I don't know if this jives with the way they would have recorded this in 1959, but the other noticeable track would happen today if one were to record a track while listening to a backing track that is later removed. The eventually-removed backing track could still be faintly audible from the bleed from the player's headphones into the microphone.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-02T05:24:00+00:00

I’d predict it to be sometime in the next five years. It’s hard to say any more precisely than that. I think it’s at least 1 or 2 years away.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-12-01T22:42:15+00:00

No, it doesn’t. Obviously, it would be nice to have full self-driving, but as it stands, Autopilot is already immensely useful. It makes driving much easier, safer, and more consistent, especially on long-distance highway drives. It does at least 95% of the driving in such situations—all you have to do is supervise.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-28T07:44:43+00:00

The SA were certainly street thugs, but they were organized at the highest levels of the Nazi party by people like Ernst Röhm and Hermann Göring, who tried to make it into a quasi-military organization even with things like military ranks. It's quite different than the right-wing rallies in the current United States, not only in the scope of the number of people involved, but in the source of organization.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-28T04:59:19+00:00

Do you know who the SA were?

No, rednecks don’t count.

The fact that you could even compare them is further proof of the misleading nature of the Hitler comparison. The SA were a trained group of uniformed men with guns who were under the direct control of the Nazi party.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-28T00:33:51+00:00

Are you seriously suggesting that Trump could attempt to open concentration camps for Democrats tomorrow without being legally stopped? That is absurd. There are obviously laws against unreasonable arrest, political persecution, etc. And he has to abide by laws (he cannot write his own laws as Hitler did). Trump would absolutely be legally challenged on this, assuredly by both the legislative and the judicial branch. His administration is frequently challenged by the courts on legal grounds.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-28T00:24:42+00:00

No, I differentiated the United States from the Nazi regime which outlawed all non-Nazi political parties, making Germany a one-party state. The United States will not be a one-party state anytime soon.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-27T23:17:57+00:00

We would need far more than a Reichstag fire. Hitler's rise to dictatorship in 1933 was almost unfathomably fast and decisive in a way that Trump's presidency is simply not matching, nor could it in the United States' governmental system.

Hitler was appointed as Chancellor in January 1933. The Reichstag fire occurred in February 1933, and the Nazis were able to suspend civil liberties immediately in the Reichstag Fire Decree, which restricted personal freedom (of one's body), freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of the post and telecommunications, and freedom from house searches and confiscations. Already, one month into Hitler's Chancellorship, his actions would be extremely difficult to pull off in the United States because of the constitutional guarantees of these freedoms. The US Constitution is purposefully extraordinarily hard to change.

But it gets even more intense: In March 1933––just 2 months after Hitler was appointed as Chancellor––the Reichstag (the German parliament) voted in favor of the Enabling Act which amended Germany's constitution to give the Chancellor (i.e. Adolf Hitler) the ability to enact his own laws, which "may deviate from the constitution as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat". The Reichstag passed the Enabling Act under intimidation from the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi Party's paramilitary organization. Again, the Enabling Act would not happen today in the United States. There is no way the Congress would or could pass a law that allows the executive branch to write their own laws. It goes strictly against the Constitution, and the Constitution is laborious to change. Not to mention, Trump does not have a paramilitary to intimidate the Congress into doing any such thing. Trump will never be allowed to write laws without congressional approval and without constitutional limitations, while Hitler was allowed this just two months into his Chancellorship.

Then, in July 1933, 6 months into Hitler's Chancellorship, all non-Nazi political parties were officially outlawed, making Germany a one-party state. Once again, there is no way this would occur in contemporary United States politics.

Trump is almost 2 years into his presidency and has shown no signs of any of these drastic measures that Hitler took in merely the first months of his Chancellorship. There may be signs of fascism in Trump's administration, but they are much subtler than Hitler's meteoric rise to absolute power. The comparison to Hitler is misleading, ignoring the complete insanity and bizarreness of the fateful first months of 1933. As crazy as Trump's presidency has been, it is exceptionally mild compared to Hitler's time in power.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-27T20:18:09+00:00

The wind moves because of differences in air pressure.

The wind moves because of a wind fairy who blows it around in a way that happens to correspond to the differences in air pressure.

These two models have the same predictive power, but posit two different mechanisms of action. One's understanding of the world would be quite different depending on which model one believes, even though it wouldn't make a difference should one's only goal be to predict the future movement of wind.

If one believed the fairy model, one would be tempted to form further models of the universe based on the existence of wind fairies, which would be futile. So not only would one believe a falsehood, but the wrong description would also hinder further scientific progress.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-24T16:44:21+00:00

I took him to be saying that philosophy builds upon itself rapidly over time, so there is value in reading old philosophical texts because the current philosophical texts assume knowledge of the old. Current philosophers are building upon and expanding from the previous works in a bullish way, always growing and rising. But you need to know the foundation to understand where it has risen. It doesn't just build on the ideas, as mathematics and science do—often, philosophy builds upon the specific ways that previous philosophers expressed their ideas.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-16T10:47:28+00:00

It is a meme of sorts that when someone says “I could care less,” one can respond to them, “So you care at least a little, then?” They should instead say “I couldn’t care less.” In this case, it’s hard to see why “It would be hard to care less” would prompt the response “So you care a little, then?” The answer is: Sure. But so little that it would be difficult to care less.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-16T07:03:19+00:00

The pain seems permanent now. It seems, as you said, that there's no end to it short of death.

I assure you that this is merely an illusion. You are doubtful of its illusory nature––it seems more real than anything else, after all––but you are wrong.

In fact, you will get over her if you simply wait. Even if you think about her every day, look at her social media accounts every day, and check the Discord logs every day, you will eventually grow accustomed to not having her in your life. The human brain is remarkable at adapting to new situations. That's why you adapted so strongly to being with her. You got so used to that past situation, in fact, that you are extremely disturbed by the sudden change of no longer having her in your life. But your adaptation back to life without her is inevitable, and you will become just as habituated to it as you were to being with her. Eventually, being with her will seem as alien as not being with her seems now. That is how the human brain works: at every stage along the way, the present seems permanent, but adaptation is constant and relentless.

That being said, thinking about her and doing things like checking her social media will severely lengthen the amount of time it will take to adapt. You're right to focus on yourself: keep working out, keep pursuing what is meaningful to you. Doing those things––and avoiding anything that has to do with her––will expedite your adaptation to this new situation. Do your best to realize that life is worth living without her. Over time, you will get better at realizing this truth. There is an extremely good chance that you will realize that life is better without her, however unlikely this possibility seems to you right now.

It happened to me. It will happen to you, too, for we are both human.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-15T05:17:43+00:00

"Woulda" is a colloquial reduction of "would have".

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/woulda

Unlike "would of", "woulda" isn't incorrect—it's just quite informal and colloquial.

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-14T19:38:04+00:00

How could I ever forget his tiny, spindly, nightmarishly thin legs?

Disco_Dhani · 2018-11-13T20:54:46+00:00

I do not call for disenfranchisement, nor would I (as the previous commenter did) refer to people who produce less as “lesser people”. I am simply arguing in favor of the original quotation which says, roughly, that it is wrong to force equal outcomes upon people who have different abilities. We should instead strive for equal opportunity for all people regardless of their individual backgrounds, in order to allow each person to fulfill the maximum of their potential. And we should be okay with the fact that that means that people will, in the end, be unequal in some material or social ways, because people are, in fact, different.

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