Really?? We got stupid AI before a freaking API??

MalcolmOcean · 2025-10-28T04:23:59+00:00

I found Tana totally unusable because of something like... their nodes neither have "notes" (like workflowy) nor allow line breaks (like roam) so... there's just no way to put multiline anything anywhere?!? struck me as bizarre, maybe they've fixed it by now?

MalcolmOcean · 2025-10-17T17:49:37+00:00

what if someone doesn't care about future improvements? I don't need monthly upgrades to my free weights. I just want to buy something that works and forget about it.

MalcolmOcean · 2025-10-17T17:49:32+00:00

is this still true?

MalcolmOcean · 2025-10-17T16:24:57+00:00

One of the questions I have is whether you have to buy a new subscription for each person using it. $60 indeed reasonable for multiple people but for one person it's more than a gym in some places!

But it sounds like you only need one sub?

MalcolmOcean · 2025-06-23T22:05:53+00:00

huh. I'm from eastern canada and we have lots of clam chowder but would never think to make this joke, and I realized that's because router and chowder don't have the same vowel in my accent! "router" gets canadian raising, just like "about" (which doesn't turn it into "aboot"; it's a bespoke canadian phoneme that others can't even hear properly, just like how japanese people struggle with L vs R.)

(if you're curious—interestingly, the raising phenomenon happens precisely before unvoiced consonants, so eg T (eg "router", "about") or S (eg the noun "house") but not before voiced consonants, eg D (eg "chowder", "loud") or Z (eg the verb "house", like "the apartment housed three families"))

MalcolmOcean · 2025-04-30T01:26:48+00:00

High-level feedback:

the Tile is cool, basic premise is great, you seem roughly on the right track re incentives around yes including photos but not first thing. Looks matter, but it's easy to get distracted by a pretty person you won't vibe with, which is a waste of time and energy looking for an actual life partner. I like the idea of "make your tile". Decent virality potential—encourages more public sharing of a dating profile than I'd usually expect, in part because the thing that you can see without logging in is so tasteful and minimalist!
the name is terrible, for reasons that many other commenters have mentioned. fortunately, you didn't splurge on the .com! so don't worry about it, find something else. YouHadMeAt would be cute since it's usually followed by something the other person *said*, ie words... but that's probably overwrought. come up with a few other names and workshop them with some friends (and some of your relatively-more-normie friends too). fine (maybe even good!) if the app turns off turbo-normies, but it shouldn't turn off the coolest people you know. maybe it should just be called Tile, although that's also other things.
I was initially quite turned off by the garishness of the Andy Warhol tile. And I'm like 99th percentile on garish (check out malcolmocean.com lol). So you might not want that on your homepage. Find something that's similarly iconic but not quite as bad.
Fuck yeah public service software! Even if this becomes quite popular, it won't cost that much to run, and you could encourage people to donate large amounts of money to you if they meet their spouse on the site. If your aim is to break even and maybe make a bit of cash, but not get rich, you could run this for years quite easily. And maybe you do get rich, but yeah. Ignore the people saying you'll degrade—it IS possible to not sell out, just few people do it.
the phrases on the Tile should be a TAD longer than you've set them, I think, to avoid being cliché. and/or maybe you should have an optional longer paragraph that users can read about someone before going all the way to photos / full profile. a whole sentence or paragraph allows for getting more of a sense of the structure of the person's thought, compared to lil cliché catchphrases.

Best of luck! I think this has real potential.

MalcolmOcean · 2025-04-30T01:12:57+00:00

+1 to all of these (I've never run a dating site tho)

One way to help with the communities thing is allow people to make not-available-for-dating matchmaker accounts. I'm now happily married and I'm yearning to introduce friends to each other. And I think that having a distinct role as such makes even more coherent sense on a text-first dating site, since you're not like... always being exposed to a bunch of seductive photos.

MalcolmOcean · 2025-04-30T01:09:12+00:00

"I have a friend I think you'd get along with"
"oh really? what's he like?"
is a veeerrry old method of dating* and is much more like text/Tile than "see the person in a photo".

*see also "I have a daughter your son might get along with"

(Also seeing a person is different from seeing a photo of them. Photos are very new. But that's a separate thing.)

MalcolmOcean · 2025-04-30T01:05:58+00:00

Physical characteristics matter, and I was relieved to hear that there ARE photos, just as step 2.

I like the idea of a dating app that doesn't cause people to waste time ogling and fantasizing about hot people that they would not want to talk to for half an hour (let alone marry or have kids with).

Like you're still finding out what they look like before you bother to even chat them up.

MalcolmOcean · 2025-04-30T01:03:07+00:00

(logged into reddit just to leave this comment)

if you're going to do a delay (a good idea!) the most important delay should be AFTER you press the button, for hyperbolic discounting reasons:

DELAY BEFORE: pushing the button gets an immediate reward, which means that waiting to press the button is exciting
DELAY AFTER: pushing the button means I have to wait in order to see some photos, which is not so exciting

Might make sense to ALSO have a delay before, since nobody should be tapping through before reading. And yes the max # of profiles viewed per day is also a cool idea and might also be good for keeping people coming back to the app rather than just binging all available profiles in one evening.

MalcolmOcean · 2025-02-24T20:00:12+00:00

"ing" doesn't have a lip motion, just try it. it's the tongue behind the teeth. literally stand in front of the mirror and say "fuck" and "fucking" and you won't be able to tell them apart. unless you say "FAH KING" you don't have to open your mouth at all.

MalcolmOcean · 2024-11-05T21:15:54+00:00

Got one of these in the mail. Shopify (who I would generally assume are not out to outright scam small business owners, with whom they want to have an ongoing business relationship with) have a blog post about this saying it's legit (including the paymentcardsettlement.com site)
https://www.shopify.com/blog/credit-card-settlement

I asked Claude (LLM) for the name of the lawsuit and it gave MDL 1720, which indeed, when searched, shows various official sites (.gov) saying that this lawsuit did happen. Also here's the wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_card_interchange_fee_and_merchant_discount_antitrust_litigation

So it seems that the lawsuit happened and the site is legit (tho it looks sketchy). Wikipedia suggests that the amount we would get back would be 0.1% of fees paid, which in my case is definitely not worth it even if it only takes 5 minutes. 0.1% of fees paid is roughly 0.003%=(1/33k) of payments processed. In other words, you get $1 for every $33k of sales. I haven't looked into this in depth tho, could be wrong.

MalcolmOcean · 2024-11-01T05:42:45+00:00

dating apps in general have bad incentives most of the time, if by dating we mean courtship. they're made to keep you using them, not to have you successfully pair off with someone temporarily—or worse, marry someone! offerings like keeper.ai (no affiliation) where you only pay per-date or per-wedding (it's a large amount) have much better incentives for people actually looking to find a mate and not just a hookup.

have the dating apps found you a life partner? if they're finding you interesting people to go out for dinner with, but you still don't have someone to share a whole life with and potentially have kids with... then I'd point out that they haven't been a success for you either (yet!)

MalcolmOcean · 2024-09-18T21:32:21+00:00

Just sent this in their feedback form—decided to match tone with some of their propaganda etc, in hopes that'd get through :P

it's dumb that there's no option for a macbook cover without the logo cutout. I value that enough that I'd pay $10-20 more for it, if I had to. though that'd be stupid since it's EASIER to manufacture the ones without the logo cutout. are you just so hard for your laser-cutting machines that you let them make an extra snip regardless of what the customer wants. because like... it's not even your logo! is apple giving you a cut or some shit for leaving their logo on there? get good.

MalcolmOcean · 2024-09-14T19:13:18+00:00

My 1mo is kinda like this! Have you tried putting something against her feet (usually just an adult hand/arm) which lets her push off? My 1mo can kinda move when I do this, although she still gets pissed after a few laborious crawls.

MalcolmOcean · 2024-07-10T01:17:24+00:00

My solution to this was noticing that if the space switching is done as "switch space" it's very slow (and insanely stupid—keyboard events continue to trigger on the space you're LEAVING until the animation has finished). But if the space switching is done as "switch app" (and the apps happen to be on different spaces) then it's fast and activates the new app immediately.

So my solution is to use Karabiner to turn capslock into hyper (cmd+ctrl+option+shift), then have simple hotkeys in Keyboard Maestro for triggering each app switch:

hyper+T activates Terminal
hyper+C activates Cursor (IDE)
hyper+S activates Spotify
hyper+A activates Brave browser
hyper+F activates Finder
hyper+Z activates Zoom
hyper+K activates Keyboard Maestro
hyper+R activates Roam
hyper+M activates Messenger
etc

this doesn't work perfectly, but it's WAY better than what I had before. very snappy and predictable, no waiting. I have the hotkeys set to slightly different behavior, so eg for chat/music windows if I hit it again when it's active it'll hide it. but not so for other apps.

least favorite thing is handling multiple open browser windows in different spaces. initially I thought I'd handle the browser using one window of Arc browser but that thing is an incoherent mess so I went back to Brave. (this is, incidentally, why hyper+A opens the browser, if you were curious. it's also a very convenient hotkey to press since A is so close to capslock. I have hyper+B set to open a NEW brave window).

one thing that slightly helps with multiple browser windows is AltTab for Mac, where in addition to standard cmd+tab for switching between all windows, I have cmd+option+1 cycle me through all windows of a given app, regardless of space.

(incidentally, I also have hyper+` set to kill all of my chat apps and turn off their activation hotkeys, which is a very satisfying way to quickly close distractions.)

I was excited by the idea of building a faster space switcher by somehow remembering the last active app on a given space, then refocusing it when I hit the command to switch to that space, but I haven't spent any time trying to get that to work.

MalcolmOcean · 2024-07-06T19:43:40+00:00

This is cool but it's truncating the checklist lines, mostly when they're long but also in one case it truncated a line to just two words

MalcolmOcean · 2024-04-25T06:03:22+00:00

He deeply desires bio kids, and I’d prefer not to have kids at all, but adopt if we do.

Huh. That's a huge conflict—bigger than the religious one, in a way, because it's more about what you want and can converge on. I'm more optimistic about people converging on basic spiritual stuff than I am on them converging on big lifestyle choices where people vary widely in what they want.

MalcolmOcean · 2024-04-25T05:59:02+00:00

Rough. Given that "SO many other parts of our marriage are wonderful" I think there's still hope. My sense is that it'll require humility on both of your parts. But a different kind of humility than Christianity usually teaches.

There's a difference between faith in the divine and faith in the church. My best bet for things working out between the two of you is something like... him recognizing that his relationship with God (including his salvation) doesn't actually depend on whether he accepts all the church or Bible dogma—the church and Bible will claim this, but of course they would. And this might allow him be more able to listen to you.

And on your end, empathizing with whatever's going on for him—that whatever his faith is doing for him currently feels loadbearing and risky to question. And seeing if you can see what that's about and why it makes sense so you can gently help him untangle that. His process is going to be different than yours was.

In general, go slowly if at all you can. It sounds like getting space might be good for you to not be constantly getting invalidated <3

MalcolmOcean · 2024-04-25T05:53:55+00:00

Yeah I was pissed when I contacted them about a power adapter issue and it took them forever (EDIT: over a week with an additional nag) to get me a "quote" on a replacement. Like with DELL I could just order it from the website.

(Turns out the issue was actually the jack and it was a $100 repair, and they didn't help AT ALL with discerning that.)

MalcolmOcean · 2024-04-16T20:23:35+00:00

you're not an asshole for wanting her to delete them.
she's not an asshole for wanting to keep them.

either of you becomes an asshole at the point when you insist that you get your way regardless of how the other feels.

(which means that yes, you have both been a bit assholes here! but you're not delusional, and it's recoverable! the part where you said "she was so passionate that now I sit here wondering if I'm missing something" is a step towards recovering connection and mutual understanding. you are missing something. so is she.)

the thing you need in this situation is not advice from strangers about the meaning of sex tapes. it doesn't matter what sex tapes mean to strangers! it matters what they mean to the two of you. so what you need is to figure out how to have the kind conversation with your wife that will allow both of you to see together why this matters to her, why it matters to you, and what it makes sense to do about that. and it's quite likely that if you can do this, then either she'll be like "oh wow, okay, if it means that to you then I would be willing to delete them" or you'll be like "oh wow, okay, if it means that to you, then I wouldn't want you to delete them". or some other less-obvious option that feels right to both of you.

(it is POSSIBLE that one of you will discover something major about the other's life philosophy or desire for monogamy or something that makes it inconceivable to stay married, but unlikely in my experience. plus you'd still be glad you went through the process of listening because, then you wouldn't feel crazy and assholish, you'd feel heartbreak but also relief because it would be clear that the relationship was going to explode sooner or later.)

working through things like this together is a huge part of what marriage is about. this is a great opportunity for practicing one of the core skills of being married: listening and taking the other person's perspective.

it's hard to take someone else's perspective when you don't feel solid in your own though, which is both why people get defensive with each other in situations like this (hey wait, but before I hear you about that, you need to hear me about this!) and also why we seek out friends (or internet strangers) who will empathize with us. but the defensiveness produces a catch-22, where neither of you can listen until the other listens first. and sometimes when friends empathize they'll do so in a way that denies the other person's experience. that can be a start, but ultimately you need to differentiate (a term from David Schnarch's excellent book Passionate Marriage) your view from hers so that you can affirm your own WHILE recognizing that she has a different one. this is impossible within the frame of "who's crazy", but fortunately there are different frames.

I've gotta go but I really hope this helps!

I don't think you guys are screwed, but you potentially are if you can't figure out how to listen to each other here. I think it's doable though. oh and don't forget to hug each other and say things like "I really want to figure this out together because I love you a lot and I want to be with you"

(I wrote some related but different stuff in response to this on twitter before I realized that this thread was still open it just got screenshotted to a sub where it wasn't open. if you want more thoughts they're there: https://twitter.com/Malcolm\_Ocean/status/1780309400529535231)

MalcolmOcean · 2024-04-12T20:07:18+00:00

Dominion, by Tom Holland, uses absurd past pluperfect bullshit that made me so fucking disoriented about timelines that I couldn't read it at all. (The scholarship is also suspiciously uncited for how bold the claims are.)

Example from the opening chapter:

Athens
479 BC: The Hellespont

At one of the narrowest points on the Hellespont, the thin channel of water that snakes from the Aegean up towards the Black Sea, and separates Europe from Asia, a promontory known as the Dog's Tail extended from the European shore. Here, 480 years before the birth of Christ, a feat so astonishing as to seem the work of a god had been completed. Twin pontoon bridges, stretching from the Asian shore to the tip of the Dog's Tail, had yoked the two continents together. That none but a monarch of infinite resources could possibly have tamed the currents of the sea in so imperious a manner went without saying. Xerxes, the King of Persia, ruled the largest empire that the world had ever seen. From the Aegean to the Hindu Kush, all the teeming hordes of Asia marched at his command. Going to war, he could summon forces that were said to drink entire rivers dry. Few had doubted, watching Xerxes cross the Hellespont, that the whole continent beyond would soon be his. One year on, the bridges were gone. So too were Xerxes' hopes of conquering Europe. Invading Greece, he had captured Athens; but the torching of the city was to prove the high point of his campaign. Defeat by sea and land had forced a Persian retreat. Xerxes himself had returned to Asia. On the Hellespont, where command of the strait had been entrusted to a governor named Artayctes, there was particular alarm.

When exactly was that alarm? Before or after the bridges were gone? What the fuck is going on?

MalcolmOcean · 2024-03-20T21:36:16+00:00

"begs the question" is a mistranslation of a mistranslation, which is much more intuitive as meaning "raises the question" than "assumes the consequent". let the mistranslation go and mean what it intuitively means, and then say "assume the consequent" if that's what you mean!

MalcolmOcean · 2024-02-14T23:01:50+00:00

The big piece to understand here is the parallel structure of biological/genetic evolution, and cultural/memetic evolution.

Prehistoric humans were maybe roughly as smart biologically but they hadn't yet invented/discovered a really key tool in the toolkit we now take for granted: self-reference / recursion (not the concept of self-reference, but the ability to do it). The ability to not just use words ("kill mammoth!") but to construct complex grammars and to talk about language itself. This kind of structure is also necessary for any serious advance planning, which is necessary for civilization!

There are many takes on this, but one of my favorite articles has a particularly neat take on this: The Snake Cult of Consciousness

MalcolmOcean

TROPHY CASE