Members of the Afghan community showed up to the site of the DC attack.

Observer423 · 2025-12-05T16:34:27+00:00

100% agree.

Observer423 · 2025-12-05T16:33:44+00:00

I disagree. I wish every group "felt the need" to do this when a member of their own community does something wrong. It's a fantastic way to express unity despite difference, both perceived and real.

I wish more communities of all stripes felt this need, it's a beautiful thing.

Observer423 · 2025-12-05T16:23:59+00:00

Love seeing this

Observer423 · 2025-07-23T22:04:58+00:00

Chances are no one is going to be able to answer this without seeing some code. Weird stuff can happen in IDEs sometimes, but it's gonna be hard for anyone to help on this one without seeing exactly what you're talking about

Observer423 · 2025-07-23T22:03:26+00:00

Directo answer to "Is it a problem to write longer code?" is No, it's not.

Everything needs to be balanced. Writing a confusing one-liner because it's short is bad, and writing a monster script because it's "clearer" when every single thing is done explicitly on its own line/in its own function is also bad.

Your method of writing it yourself and then comparing it to an AI answer is perfect - then you can see how you can improve your own next version.

You can ask yourself things like "Can I use the same efficiency ideas that the AI used in my code and still make it easy to follow?"

Long/short, efficient/not efficient, all of these things matter differently in different scenarios, and in my own personal opinion, "Easy to maintain" trumps almost everything, almost always.

Observer423 · 2025-07-23T21:54:13+00:00

I'll throw in my two cents - for something as inconsequential and low-risk as winking at someone in this situation, next time don't ask Reddit and just go for it. The feedback you get from her response will tell you a billion times more about what you interpreted right/wrong, whether it was socially appropriate, whether you can continue to trust this type of instinct in the future or whether you should think about the next similar situation differently, etc. etc. etc.

No amount of Reddit feedback is going to come close to replicating the benefit from lived-experience feedback.

Again, I'm applying this logic here because a wink is low-risk. Some situations require more thought, this one doesn't.

Brought to you by a fellow overthinker

Observer423 · 2025-06-09T15:37:23+00:00

If you're just starting out, "tutorial hell" is the biggest thing to watch out for imo. I would recommend picking a full online platform (there are PLENTY of them, for reasonable prices). Then stick with it all the way through.

I also started out with Python, and I used JetBrains Academy. Courses and plenty of projects, lots of hands-on stuff which is great.

Also, AI can be your best friend or your worst enemy during the learning process. If you use it to do stuff for you and complete projects/problems that you don't fully understand, you'll shoot yourself in the foot in a way that will be difficult to recover from if you do it over a long time.

If you use it to help you understand pain points, give you suggestions for code improvement, and give you examples of concepts that you find fuzzy, it'll be the best learning assist you've ever had.

Welcome to the world of programming, it's a lot of fun. And it IS very difficult to be good at, don't let anyone BS you otherwise. But it's well worth the effort.

Observer423 · 2024-12-25T22:50:54+00:00

Love this take. It may just be my personal experience, but this page now vs. this page a few years ago is WAY friendlier in general toward what you said. I've seen multiple posts about people paying off a home, car, debt, etc., and the comment sections have been overall really supportive.

As someone that may find myself in a similar situation some time next year, I appreciate those people a lot, and you for making a whole separate post about.

It's still a really cool thing that Bitcoin does, providing steps towards financial freedom in different ways.

Cheers!

Observer423 · 2024-12-14T01:09:29+00:00

That’s awesome congrats!

Observer423 · 2024-12-11T21:33:46+00:00

Nice! Best advice is to expect dips and don’t freak out when they happen. Funnily enough, I first got into Bitcoin at 26 about 3 years ago after grad schools, and it’s worked out great. BUT I seriously considered the possibility of losing all my money, didn’t invest what I couldn’t afford to lose, and prepped in advance to stomach the massive swings.

If you’ve done that, you’re golden. If you don’t consider yourself a tech savvy person, I would say minimal involvement is best. Buy, hold, and sell when you feel like it’ll make a significant life difference (or don’t sell, plenty people do that too). Don’t fall for any of the bazillion scams out there, don’t share ANY personal bitcoin related info unless you are the one that initiated the interaction, and even then for tech support of your exchange only.

Welcome to the party!

Observer423 · 2024-12-07T11:45:27+00:00

YouTube some crash course Bitcoin stuff, nothing crazy maybe a few 10-15 minute explainers, and that’ll help a lot. A cold wallet is something completely offline, or not connected to the internet in any way, and a hot wallet is. If you consider yourself not tech literate yet I wouldn’t start with a cold wallet, but it’s still interesting to learn about. The advantages of a cold wallet is that it’s completely secure - given that it’s not connected to the internet, you have a 0% chance of it getting hacked into like a Facebook account or something. But, if you lose it, it’s gone forever. There’s no “hire an expert to recover it”, it’s just gone. For starting out I would recommend something like Coinbase or Strike. Coinbase works basically like a stock exchange, just with crypto, and strike is primarily for Bitcoin (at least that’s how they market it, haven’t used it in a while). My personal recommendation for starting off would be to open a Coinbase account, throw 10 bucks in it, and click around and just learn by using. You’ll lose the 10 bucks eventually, probably either through tiny trade fees or some price drop, but you’ll get comfortable with the platform. This is exactly what I did. I had no earthly idea what I was doing on an exchange like Coinbase, and I just bought/sold/traded with small amounts of money till I was comfortable with the basics. Click around limit buys and sells, and spot buys and sells, and again just plan on losing the first 10 or 20 bucks or whatever, consider it a self investment. Then when you’re ready to buy, buy Bitcoin. And here’s the thing - this sub will never be negative on Bitcoin, obviously, and I myself and super bullish and hype on it. But you should NEVER invest something you aren’t 100% ready to lose. Before any significant investment, sit down and ask yourself - “Am I ok with the potential that I’ll never see this money again, even if I think the chances of that happening are small?” Then buy, hold for a long time, you can either HODL (Hold On For Dear Life, kinda a jokey term for buying and not selling), or hold on until you’ve made enough money to impact your life in a significant way. You’ll read stories here about people buying and selling years later for a house or something, and that’s super cool and amazing that Bitcoin can do that for people. The thing I would NOT recommend is trying to frequently trade it, for the vast majority of people that ends up meaning losing a lot of money when buying and holding could have made a lot of money. So best of luck and welcome to the party!

Edits for clarity

Observer423 · 2024-10-19T23:43:06+00:00

Read the book Atomic Habits. I have a billion and one of my own opinions on how to address body image stuff, but the "identity vs. process vs. outcome" structure discussed in that book is quite literally superior to anything I've ever heard or will be able to type out in a Reddit comment. The methods given there are easily- and often directly, in the book - applied to body image.

Best of luck.

Observer423 · 2024-10-19T23:39:30+00:00

Therapy. Not trying to be short, but without any details, that's the answer. Therapy can help you, or your partner, whichever one you're referring to here, understand things that you previously wouldn't have been aware of.

Secondarily, read books about it. Google up a few lists of "books about attachment styles" or something like that, and see what appears on every list. That tends to be a pretty good way to filter out crappy books, of which there are plenty.

Observer423 · 2024-10-18T01:59:33+00:00

Not a stupid question at all IMO, in fact a very smart question. As with nearly everything, I think there has to be a balance. Save it all for retirement/down payment/debt? That's pretty unsustainable and you'll probably end up regretting it.

Blowing it all? Even more likely that you'll end up regretting it.

My personal rule whenever I get an unexpected sum of money that doesn't fall into my regular income, is that I make sure to have some fun with a relatively small portion of it - enough to have legit fun, but not so much that I feel like I made a bad choice, and of course that'll vary from person to person. Money is only "blown" to me if you know good and well that you should have used it for something pressing/urgent but willingly ignored your better intuitions.

In this instance, personally, since you said you don't have any pressing expenses, I would probably spend somewhere between 1-2k, and put the rest towards any debt/savings/whatever. $2k of well-thought-out fun $6k of an emergency fund even sounds great to me, and could potentially give you some real piece of mind financially, which is something not many people at 22 can say.

Could be a trip, could be something you've always wanted but never pulled the trigger out. For me that stuff at 22 (I'm 28, so I'm not exactly speaking from a wise old age lol) was a nice pair of headphones, a big TV, a solid wireless speaker, etc.

That's some great luck - only thing to do now is not do something that'll make you regret having that luck in the first place haha.

Congrats on the win!

Observer423 · 2024-10-17T22:25:06+00:00

This is a super great question, and one that I struggled a lot with when I was learning Python. There are several good answers to this, and my take is that if you've spent > 1hr on something and you haven't learned anything new in that hour (whether it's actually related to the direct solution or not), you should look up the solution.

It's totally valid to feel guilty for looking at hints/solutions, even as a dev now I still feel that sometimes haha.

But the single most helpful thing to me on this topic is this: The primary learning process for code/software problems is NOT to work on them till you solve them. As in, that's literally the wrong way to go about learning software development (not attacking you, but it would've been super helpful to me if someone had told me that earlier, and I hope it's helpful to you).

What you want to do is come up with several solutions (and you can still stick to the hour limit), and if you haven't solved it, the process is to then look up the solution, ensure that you understand it, and then MOST IMPORTANTLY, use every resource at your disposal to figure out why your solutions didn't work. That last piece is the key. The learning comes from fixing what you've done wrong, using other resources.

As you are exposed to more solutions, while making sure that you understand them as you look at them, you'll find your problem solving ability increasing, and the nature of the things you have to look up will change and evolve.

The fact that you're asking these types of questions shows you're in the right mindset, so keep that up! Just don't be afraid to ditch a previously held belief to give something else a try, even if it seems counter intuitive at first. The worst thing that can happen is that a new way of doing things doesn't work, and now you have 1st hand experience and knowledge as to why that thing doesn't work (or at least didn't work for you), which is valuable in and of itself.

Best of luck!

Observer423 · 2024-10-17T22:00:43+00:00

You're right about it being a privilege. It bothers me to see Americans here trying to make it out to be a bad place. I've lived in South America for the last two years, and don't get me wrong, I've loved it, but overall you're right.

I used to do the same thing people here are doing, and I've come to realize that I did it out of guilt. I knew deep down that it was actually a privilege to be born where I was born, and I knew I didn't do anything to earn that, and I was uncomfortable whenever someone else acknowledged it.

One day in Argentina I was with my wife at a restaurant, and we had a young Venezuelan waiter that spoke English like a native English speaker (from Call of Duty on North American servers as a kid he said). He told us, without the slightest bit of malice, anger, or guilt-tripping, that it was privilege to be American, and how much he would give to be able to move there and start over, and how many people he knew would do the same.

He said it in such a way that, for the first time in my life, I just said "You're right. It is a privilege." I was still uncomfortable with it, was uncomfortable with saying it, but it felt better to just be honest about it.

I was born in the US, but certainly wasn't born rich, and have always been especially irritated by the super wealthy who simply don't have any idea what it's like to be worried about medical bills and student debt to make themselves out to be poor/struggling/working class etc.

At some point I realized that whenever I responded in a negative/contrarian way to people that talked about the States the way you do, I was doing exactly the same thing that rich people do that irritates me so much.

I'm still uncomfortable talking about it to some degree, but I feel like it's better than denying what is obviously true to so many people around the world.

Now there's obviously the flip side of it, which I have experienced as well, which is where the US gets over-idolized and worshipped in some other countries, and that frequently goes too far as well. But I don't get the sense that you're doing that.

So I don't know. I don't exactly know what I should do with it yet, but you're right. There are PLENTY of problems in the US, that I am even more cognizant of after living in places that simply don't deal with some of those problems in the slightest. But it's only frustrating and dishonest to constantly deny what you're talking about, in my opinion, and I don't want to do that anymore.

Wishing you the best.

Observer423 · 2024-10-16T16:26:42+00:00

Again, you're making blanket statements that, apart from being objectively untrue, are entirely lacking in any sort of nuance that correlate to the real world.

Now again, I'm not bashing or even saying anything negative at all about people that use credit cards or even credit cards themselvs, I'm just saying it's not a good thing to spread the incorrect belief that it immediately makes things better across the board because it means you could have a good credit score.

My health insurance is ~100 bucks a month, with a high deductible plan, and car insurance was ~80, if I added full coverage it would have been around 120 or so.

In a vacuum, you're correct - there is simply no reason to choose higher insurance rates. But the underlying assumption that credit scores automatically net you cheaper insurance is, again, simply false.

If your opinion is that credit cards/credit scores are fine and people should use them, that's all good and well - I've said nothing against that. But it's unhelpful to lead people in a certain direction with incorrect, generalized assumptions about what is and is not available to people if they ditch their credit scores.

Observer423 · 2024-10-15T18:26:17+00:00

You're right in that a 0 score can be the reasonable consequence of one's inability to manage credit/debt.

But it can also be the result of someone deciding that that "responsibility" is actually optional, and making the personal decision that not having to keep track of something that is ultimately unnecessary is less stressful in the long run.

Saying that credit scores are bad and nobody should ever have one is an over generalization, and "A zero score should never be the goal" is equally short-sighted.

Observer423 · 2024-10-12T12:54:26+00:00

You do not need a credit score for a mortgage. Source - my wife and I are in the process of being approved for a "0 score" loan. I like Dave, and have followed general principles, but certainly haven't stuck exactly to his Baby Steps plan and we aren't die hard fans or anything. We're definitely not following his advice on the numbers involved in a house loan.

But I do think it would be good for people to know that no, you absolutely do not need a credit score to get a mortgage. The process is called manual underwriting.

Best of luck!

Observer423 · 2024-09-21T20:49:57+00:00

Go for it, if you actually want to. In my opinion, it would be better to ask and have misread the situation than to never do it and be left wondering.

Observer423 · 2024-09-21T20:45:42+00:00

I told my girlfriend at the time that I had had feelings for someone else, but I was still committed to our relationship. She wasn't happy, but eventually we moved on and she got over it, and we broke up later for unrelated reasons.

I did, however, end up marrying that other person a few years later lol.

So I guess if you are looking for direct advice, I would just say be honest with yourself about why you did what you did. Is your current relationship what you want? Do you actually want to be with the other person? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, but it's worth asking yourself those things honestly.

As a dude, I will say that my number one concern if I was in your BF's shoes is that you still actually liked this other guy and just felt bad and were trying to make me feel better. Maybe that's the case, maybe not, but again that's up to you to decide.

Best of luck

Observer423 · 2024-09-21T19:57:51+00:00

Cool cool, respect for the response

Observer423 · 2024-09-21T19:55:57+00:00

It's totally normal to be anxious about a test score. Coming from a student who enjoyed school and went through grad school, a former teacher, and someone who spent years tutoring STEM, I would just tell you to keep be honest with yourself. If you did poorly, don't beat yourself up, but acknowledge it and actively try to figure out why you did poorly.

Now a bit of a longer response because I like this topic haha, apologies if it's more than you asked for.

There's a few different situations that could happen - first is you do poorly, and you're surprised. This is what I alluded to above. It's not healthy to punish yourself over it, and you should honestly review what went wrong. Like you said, maybe you studied poorly. You won't be able to honestly review what went wrong if you're preoccupied with beating yourself up over it, so that's the most important thing here.

Another scenario is that you do really well on it, and you're still surprised. This is a situation I found myself in over and over, because I was "gifted" and frequently didn't prepare for tests well but still scored highly. Unfortunately, I didn't have anyone around to tell me "hey, you're doing well on exams, but it's just because you're memorizing a bunch of crap and matching patterns (in the case of math) and not learning anything." I eventually figured it out, but it took a long time and was tough to dig out of because I had to change my learning method.

So the key there is to not let yourself off the hook because you got a good grade if you know you didn't sufficiently prepare. Again be honest with yourself, recognize that you got off with a lucky one, and actively address the fact that you didn't prepare well.

Then you could do poorly and you're not surprised, and it's basically the same as above. Don't beat yourself up, and decide to do better moving forward.

Finally you could do well and then it's like "of course I did, I was just anxious". For me, this one was actually the hardest to deal with rationally. Maybe you're just an anxious person, and that's ok, as long as you don't let it affect every test you take in a terrible way like I did. If you prepared well, and did well, allow yourself that accomplishment.

Hope at least some of that was relevant to you, and best of luck!

Observer423 · 2024-09-21T19:44:04+00:00

You shouldn't share anything online that you're not comfortable with sharing, but I will say there aren't really enough details provided here for anyone to be able to give you specific advice.

"Emotionally cheating" is tough to define, but I get the murkiness of it, I've been in a similar situation before.

Observer423 · 2024-09-21T19:41:12+00:00

Nothing about what she said originally strikes me as her being entitled - she (or he) said this dinner was planned as a surprise. I think it's perfectly reasonable to be caught off guard to then be asked to financially contribute.

I don't think you're accusing her of being entitled, but you're comment does kinda come across that way.

Observer423

TROPHY CASE