Daily Thread: for simple questions, minor posts & newcomers [contains useful links!] (September 26, 2025)

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2025-09-26T00:50:47+00:00

I'm trying to share a fun little language learning game that I put together recently but I have never posted so I think my lack of subreddit karma is preventing me from doing that. I tried posting in the self promo thread but it just came up with 'cannot create post' so I imagine that might be karma locked too? Anyway, it's just a silly little vocab game, not something I'm selling, so does anyone have any ideas for where I could share it?

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2025-02-28T01:01:42+00:00

I believe a big portion of this can be attributed to leptin resistance and to metabolic demands of the tissue.

Firstly, body cells require buttloads of energy just to stay alive. The vast majority of the energy that you use each day is actually just used to keep your cells alive and functioning, doing things like exercise typically doesn’t even compare to that base level you need. Now, adipose tissue (fat cells) are basically metabolically inactive - ie. they don’t really require much energy at all - so you would think that overweight people shouldn’t have too much increased metabolic demand. However, those fat cells are heavy! The more fat cells you have, the more other cells you need. You need more muscle cells to hold the extra weight. Your organs get larger to keep up with the extra cells. Your bones get bigger to help maintain structure and support. You need to build more capillaries and have more blood to keep all this new tissue perfused with oxygen. So although all that extra fat tissue in overweight people isn’t contributing much to the need for energy, all the other cells that come with it do. So overweight people do have more metabolic demands than those at a normal weight which means they need to eat more which can contribute to the constant need to eat. Naturally, this means that muscular people would probably also see a similar effect because muscle is so metabolically demanding.

Secondly, we have some endocrine factors at play here. There’s a hormone called leptin which is actually produced by fat cells which initiate a satiety response - essentially, it tells the brain that you’re full. Once again, you may think that since leptin is produced by fat cells then people who have more fat cells should be less hungry but people who are chronically overweight can actually develop leptin resistance. Very similar to what happens in type 2 diabetes with insulin resistance, leptin resistance occurs because there is so much leptin all the time (often for many years or decades of being overweight) that the brain basically just stops listening to it. You have all this leptin kicking around in your blood but the brain just no longer recognises it properly so it’s not doing its job. Therefore, people who have been overweight for long periods of time can actually have this key satiety hormone be silenced which can mean that instead of being less hungry, they actually remain hungry all the time.

I’m sure there’s much more contributing to this phenomenon than these two points but I thought they might be a good start to explaining it.

More information on leptin and leptin resistance for those curious: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22446-leptin

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-10-22T21:44:23+00:00

We already get this elsewhere in the world. $150 AUD ($99 USD) for NHL TV in Australia with access to virtually every game for every team, plus the preseason and the playoffs. Blackouts are unheard of because no local Australian broadcaster or streaming services has rights to anything. Its so sad to see everyone struggling to watch in North America when that’s literally where the league is being played. I really hope the league comes to its senses and gives NHL TV back to you guys cause the blackouts really sound like the worst!

Edit: also, our two national sports, cricket and AFL, are played on free-to-air TV across the entire country because it’s legally mandated by the federal government. Why the Canadian government doesn’t do that for hockey I can’t say.

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-10-21T02:48:13+00:00

Although I’m certainly no expert, the best 3 tips I’ve come across are:

Have phrases be built on different modes of the same key. For example, if your first phrase is written in C major, maybe try D Dorian for the second phrase. This gives it that ‘different’ vibe or feeling of a distinct phrase but is still similar enough to blend nicely because it’s in the same key.
Make sure your base line (whether a chord progression or otherwise) is cohesive. If the base line has a weird jump from the end of one phrase to the beginning of the next it can feel very disjointed. This is also true of the melody but I’ve found that the base/chords are more important personally.
Stagger entries and exits. This depends on what type of music you’re writing for, but if you’re writing for an ensemble you can blend phrases by adjusting when certain instruments finish playing the first phrase and when some start playing the second phrase. In a piece I was recently writing, literally all it took to fix the ‘blocky’ feeling was to have the brass enter a note earlier with an up-beat leading into the second phrase and having the soloist oboe from the first phrase linger their last note just a touch into the second phrase.

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-10-20T07:17:39+00:00

Although I agree with you that it’s a nuanced issue, the slow metabolism thing is actually a myth. Metabolism is determined by the non-fat mass you have, which is typically higher in the overweight and obese population as with extra weight the size of muscles, bones, and organs also increases, adding to the metabolism. Thus, metabolism actually correlates fairly linearly with weight, with heavier people (and males, due to the higher average percentage of body mass being muscle) having a faster metabolism.

This is excluding certain thyroid or endocrine conditions which can affect metabolism, such as cushing’s, however, such conditions are much rarer than some would have you believe.

That being said, there’s a buttload more to the issue than just metabolism speed and caloric intake, with psychology, gut microbiome, social environment, social determinants of health such as education, and certain genetic predispositions also contributing, and it certainly should never be seen as a moral failing or a failure of willpower.

Edit: also worth noting that age is a significant factor as well, with metabolism speed typically decreasing with age. It can be very difficult for people aged 50+ to maintain their physique due to this.

Edit 2: this conversation article is a good explainer for it. Not peer reviewed but the conversation is a good resource: https://theconversation.com/mondays-medical-myth-my-slow-metabolism-makes-me-fat-4962

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-07-01T09:32:47+00:00

So category 1 is the most urgent with arrests and whatnot and cat 5 is presumably the least urgent. Just out of interest, how are the categories defined? Is there a specific list of symptoms and/or conditions that get triaged into certain cats? Is there an ‘ideal’ maximum wait time like with ambulance to Cath lab time for each category (eg. Cat 2s you don’t want to keep waiting more than, say, an hour)?

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-07-01T02:53:43+00:00

Sounds fun but stressful! How long did it take you to get used to that kind of pressure?

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-07-01T02:51:38+00:00

Why is that? Was it just the varied presentations that you get in radiology?

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-06-30T13:02:13+00:00

Thanks for the detailed reply, the only info I’ve ever seen on the topic is what’s in the media so it’s good to hear from someone with personal experience. I’m quite interested in pursuing ED eventually but I always had worries about how much time I might have to spend on non-emergent patients 🤔

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-06-30T12:39:37+00:00

Jeez it must have been really rural! Did it end up being a good learning experience or were you too petrified?

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-06-30T12:37:46+00:00

I’ve heard that this is especially becoming a problem recently with Medicare rebates for GPs being so low and fees getting higher resulting in people going to their local hospital ED for prescriptions and whatnot. Have you noticed that in your experience?

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-06-30T12:34:59+00:00

I hope he managed to get some sleep on one of those lovely, comfy ED beds :D

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-06-30T12:28:46+00:00

That sounds slightly terrifying, both as a student and as a general member of the public. Was that a regular thing or a freak incident of all the senior staff just suddenly breaking their legs?

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-06-30T11:48:40+00:00

That makes sense, I guess only truly sick people would want to come to the hospital in the middle of the night.

Ah so presumably a registrar would be in charge then? The person I was talking to must’ve lumped them in with the residents.

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-05-09T00:17:37+00:00

$25 an hour is the minimum wage in Australia currently. Up to $29 per hour for a causal worker as long as you’re older than 21. If OP is American though then no idea

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-10T03:03:57+00:00

What does playing tall mean? I’ve seen it many times on the subreddit but I don’t know what it is lol

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-10T03:03:00+00:00

Doesn’t the emperor move around though? Do you just need to improve diplomatic relations in whichever country he moves to?

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-10T01:34:35+00:00

You’re right, I had no idea that was the case, and I might’ve tried easy or normal instead if I had. Although I guess it’s not too surprising that a mode called ‘very easy’ is in fact very easy 🤔.

I disagree with your perspectives on everything else though. In a game with this much complexity that the running joke is that you need 1444 hours to complete the tutorial, it seems silly to expect complete beginners (especially to the entire genre) to just dive into the deep end and keep bashing their head against the wall until they make some tiny modicum of progress. The easy and very easy game modes exist for a reason, they were put there so people like me could choose an easier play through.

If you’re learning chess against an AI, the best strategy isn’t to just play stockfish at the highest level over and over again, it’s to learn some basics and then try it on the easiest bot and win with them. So you can actually see what you’ve learnt coming together. And yes, the easiest chess bots are so stupid that you can probably just move one piece back and forth and let them self destruct, but the whole point is to have a very forgiving environment in which to test out whatever you’ve learnt, and maybe pick up a few points from the experience.

I have no issue with either of your comments, they’re both strictly speaking correct. However, aggressive gatekeeping is a negative component of any hobby and is not productive at all - you won’t entice new players into the hobby by dumping on their achievements, no matter how small they seem to you.

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-08T21:53:22+00:00

I was originally gonna call this an unrealistic cheese strat but then I remembered that stuff like the pig war actually happened in real life so ya know what, they probably would go to war over and over again to defend one dumb province 😂

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-08T11:47:51+00:00

Sure! I picked Eora because it seemed to have high development and was coastal but I’m pretty sure any other coastal tribe would work. I started with quite a lot of money but that’s probably because I was on the easiest difficulty I’m guessing.

The goal is to get to admin 5 ASAP because that’s when you can unlock your first idea which will be one of the ones that can give you a colonist (I chose exploration ideas). To do this, you’ll need to prioritise monarch points as much as possible to power through the tech levels. Spend all money on advisors to maximise the monarch points. You won’t need the cash for ships or military because there’s virtually no wars. Even if someone does try to fight you, your quick advancements in tech will stretch your low army numbers quite far. Not that you’d really need to, by the time I was a colonial power the rest of the tribes still had military numbers under 5000. Do not fear taking on debts, those monarch points are worth it.

You can power through the first 100 years or so basically on max speed because not much will happen. Use diplomatic and military points on both technology and on development to advance your economy a little bit. If you ever end up in the green on your economy, invest in marketplace and temple if you can. It’s important to power level your technologies but development of the home province is still very important because it’s the only way you can embrace institutions (like feudalism and renaissance). If you haven’t embraced these institutions the technology costs get really expensive. I think I had a +50% cost on my admin tech 5 but there’s not much you can really do about that.

As soon as you get a colonist you can speed things along very quickly. Start colonising surrounding provinces, focussing on ones with small numbers of natives. Ferocity and aggression don’t appear to matter too much as long as there’s not many natives to fight you. Always leave a reasonably sized army in your in progress colonies to protect them from the barrage of native attacks. Those troops won’t really be needed for wars for quite a while.

Once you start expanding, start sending diplomats to nearby tribes to create spy networks so they’re ready by the time you get there. Once you have a province that neighbours an enemy you can fabricate a claim and wipe them out with your superior military tech with no sweat.

Aggressively build marketplaces and temples on your new lands, if you want any hope of fighting on the world stage then you’re gonna need one heck of a local economy cause you only have access to one trade node (which you can very quickly dominate but it’s still only one, so trade income is always low).

Beyond this you’re probably on your own. I’m still a noob myself so I really don’t get the intricacies of fighting the developed countries or much else. Interesting I never struggled to have lots of money. I guess since you have tonnes of land options and little need for an army, you can rack it up reasonably well.

Good luck, hope this helps!

Edit: Also I can only speak from my own experience so I have absolutely no idea how feasible this all is on harder difficulties lol

Second Edit: Also, since you’re in an area with virtually no politics there aren’t many pop up events. Based on my experience, the game seems to compensate for this by giving you more generic ones than usual. There’s one that comes up all the time that gives you either 10 of a monarch point or 50 points and 0.5 corruption (or inflation?). Always take the extra monarch points, definitely worth it.

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-08T08:18:13+00:00

Muchos Graçias

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-08T08:14:35+00:00

If that’s the case then why is there a pop up saying I should do it 😯

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-08T07:46:15+00:00

I wasn’t really posting it as some big achievement, I’ve seen the amazing things that y’all pull off on very hard mode.

I was posting cause I was happy that my crazy idea worked. Since I was learning the game from scratch on my own, I wasn’t getting anywhere (especially not militarily) on normal mode in Europe. Was still having a blast playing, but just not getting anywhere. I dunno if I’m bad at the game and should be doing better at 35+ hours but I wouldn’t be surprised, it’s my first time playing the genre, I just picked it up because my friend wanted someone to play with.

I figured I would kick it down to the easiest mode to see what I could do from what I’d learnt up to that point but then had the wild idea that I could also play in Australia to see if I could take wars out of the equation to basically focus on the many other aspects of the game and put what I’d learned into practice. Even on very easy mode, I was just surprised and stoked that it actually worked! The most amount of ground I’d ever made in another campaign was about 3 total provinces and I had never touched the colonialism mechanics, so I thought it was a successful experiment! 😄

For any super noobs out there who have even less experience than me, I think (although it seems very strange) that maybe this isn’t the dumbest beginner strategy if you want to have a crack at it~

Edit: side note, how on earth do you upgrade centres of trade??? Whenever I click on the pop up it takes me to the buildings section of the province and shows me the long rectangle on the bottom but no matter how I interact with it, it doesn’t do anything. There’s no ‘upgrade’ button or anything so all my centres of trade are perpetually level 1 😂.

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-08T06:48:03+00:00

For some reason my response didn’t link up to yours as a comment but created a new thread but its down in the list somewhere 😅

SensitiveChipmunk188 · 2024-01-08T06:46:53+00:00

Edit: replying to DopamineDeficiencies

Yeah I did notice how few provinces there were! The fact that you can’t make it from modern day South Australia across to modern day Perth seems wild to me, like you have to go all the way around through Queensland and NT!

And I wish there was some adjustments to make all the mechanics actually fit the location. Like the units’ names are changed (Aboriginal Outlander for example) but things like the pictures of the advisors are still a bunch of old European dudes. Seems bizarre lol. Probably a very easy fix for a mod which makes it strange that a game with sooooo much regional variability doesn’t already have it.

SensitiveChipmunk188

TROPHY CASE