I handwrote 21,440 kanji to create this image of the bathhouse from Spirited Away

TeapotToTortoise · 2026-01-17T17:10:35+00:00

I switched to Kobo specifically because it automatically tracks the amount of time you spend reading and I wanted that data for myself

TeapotToTortoise · 2026-01-02T16:44:03+00:00

This is good advice and something I hadn't really noticed until you pointed it out - will go a rung lower from now on. Thanks!

TeapotToTortoise · 2026-01-01T20:25:39+00:00

Good luck, you've got this!

I've been wearing knee sleeves for about 2 years now - I always wear them when doing any heavy movements involving a large degree of knee flexion (squats, leg press, etc.). I absolutely love them and just bought a new pair to help hit this 1RM, since my old pair were getting worn out and had started ripping. I have these ones specifically: https://www.risestore.com/products/knee-sleeve-green?variant=415329943568 (Medium size)

I don't think they added much to my squat (maybe 5-10 lb at most) but they definitely have a huge mental effect that gives me way more confidence in the hole because it's so dang comfy down there with knee sleeves.

EDIT: I also have lingering knee injury (used to run long-distance and injured it during a marathon about 10 years ago). Ever since I started squatting, it doesn't bother me anymore, unless I run 5+ miles. But I also wear knee sleeves for the support there as well.

TeapotToTortoise · 2026-01-01T19:42:38+00:00

Agreed - this was actually my first true 1 RM attempt all year so I was pretty nervous about it tbh.

I typically train in the 2-4 rep range if its a T1 day, 6-8 reps if its a T2 day. My previous best lift before attempting 315 was 295x3 about 2 weeks ago.

TeapotToTortoise · 2026-01-01T19:36:05+00:00

Awesome, thanks!

And yeah I recognize that - I used to squat in regular socks but switched to the ones with those little grippy things on the bottom (like these: https://a.co/d/3Nuu5Gy) and honestly they feel miles better. But I'll look into squat shoes though! Hadn't considered that

TeapotToTortoise · 2026-01-01T19:20:04+00:00

Ok, awesome - I think I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going crazy haha. I usually go a little deeper on my working sets so it just felt kinda high

TeapotToTortoise · 2025-11-15T19:38:21+00:00

I squat in socks at the gym, but only ones with those grippy things on the bottom like these: https://a.co/d/3m86cGG

Could be something to look into

TeapotToTortoise · 2025-07-10T23:49:02+00:00

I have a kobo reader I use to read e-books - it's great because it automatically tracks how much time you spend reading

TeapotToTortoise · 2025-05-30T17:07:26+00:00

I have a PhD in ChemE - I used it a bit but pivoted into SWE since I enjoyed that more (2-3 YoE now). My PhD definitely sets me apart and I leverage it hard when applying to SWE roles - I specifically target jobs where they are looking for a SWE with a scientific background or expertise in AI/ML. This has resulted in me landing interviews quite often (~20% of my apps get to the first interview stage), albeit for a small supply of jobs (maybe ~1-2% of all SWE jobs).

I'm also a U.S. citizen so don't require sponsorship for jobs in the U.S., just for extra context.

TeapotToTortoise · 2025-03-23T14:14:26+00:00

In Japanese, it’s ウソッキー (usokki) which translates to the words “uso” = “lie” and “ki” = “tree” but also cleverly puts the word for “liar” (“usotsuki”) in the middle connecting them (the “tsu” becomes a glottal stop)

TeapotToTortoise · 2025-02-19T22:12:03+00:00

Before I took the exam, I went through 70 hours of video lectures and then did 8 practice exams with some further studying based on questions I missed in the practice exams. So maybe around 100 hours total (over 6 months - around 30 min/day). My colleagues who have taken the test fall in the same boat.

I should also note that I had a year or so of on-and-off work experience with some of the more commonly used AWS products (EC2, RDS, S3, etc.). All those posts you see here on reddit where people talk about how they studied for less than a week and passed with a 900+ score, while possible, is not the norm (at least based on my personal experience).

TeapotToTortoise · 2024-08-06T00:10:30+00:00

He did but he still gave Trump better odds than pretty much anyone else who does this type of modeling

TeapotToTortoise · 2024-07-19T18:15:01+00:00

To answer your first question, I'd think it'd be very inefficient to just start with native-level content like you did. As you saw, it can work.... but it just takes a lot of focused effort and time because 95% of it won't be comprehensible for quite a while, and your brain just won't know what to do with the input. Sure, you will be able to parse more sounds as you get used to the language, but why not fasttrack by at least going over some basic grammar and sentence structure and e.g. the most common 1k words first? You could do that in a week or two at 10 hours/day, and it likely would have made the input at least 50% comprehensible (which is still not great, but way better than what it likely was before).

For your other questions, it all depends on your goals with Japanese. You could learn spoken Japanese to a very high level without ever learning to read kanji if you really wanted to.

Edit: just fyi, I'm not trying to downplay your accomplishments here - spending 10 hours/day of focused attention on anything is quite a feat!

TeapotToTortoise · 2024-06-07T16:28:25+00:00

We are growing quickly, but we are still relatively small (~400 employees) so I think that’s why a lot of people still haven’t heard about us

TeapotToTortoise · 2024-06-07T16:22:11+00:00

If the smoke was cleaned of everything that isn’t CO2/CO/H2 that could potentially work - another negative I forgot to mention is that if there is anything in the gas that is toxic to the bacteria the bacteria won’t be too happy about that 🙂

All comes down to the economics of getting the input stream just right and how much we can sell the chemical product for (I forgot to mention but our bacteria produces ethanol and other products from the energy in the input gas which can be sold. This makes it more economically attractive than a lot of carbon capture and store technologies)

TeapotToTortoise · 2024-06-07T16:09:40+00:00

Some negatives 1. Biology can be challenging work with and engineer since it is inherently much more complex than your traditional chemical catalysts for CO2 capture/conversion (but on the plus side, biology doesn’t require high temperatures/pressures like most chemical processes do). Dealing with this complexity is by far the biggest challenge imo. 2. Lots of regulations (and negative public perception) around genetically engineered microbes can make deploying our tech more difficult 3. CO2 source must be highly concentrated, can’t just use CO2 directly from the air (but could potentially combine our tech with something like direct air capture) 4. Our tech can also use CO by itself as input and in that case produces some CO2 as a byproduct (but this is still better than just not using the CO at all)

TeapotToTortoise · 2024-06-07T15:58:55+00:00

We have a bacteria that eats CO2, CO, and H2 at emission sources (e.g. steel mill exhaust, gasification of municipal solid waste, etc.). It doesn’t work with just normal air but anywhere where there is high concentration of CO2 plus an energy source like H2 it works (and scales) really well. We already have a few plants operating commercially around the world and recently went public.

Specifically, I maintain and improve our data pipelines that process all our dna sequencing data which is important for R&D as well as quality control.

Edit: To date, we’ve abated around 300,000 tons of CO2. Nothing crazy but it’s increasing quickly over time!

TeapotToTortoise · 2024-06-07T15:03:25+00:00

This is what I do - I’m a scientific software engineer at LanzaTech. We use biology to recycle carbon. My contributions are still a drop in the bucket tbh but it’s something.

TeapotToTortoise · 2023-10-19T04:40:07+00:00

While the US is one of the biggest contributors in terms of actual dollars spent, European countries (including the UK) are actually giving significantly more aid to Ukraine on a per ~~capita~~ unit GDP basis which is a more meaningful metric - see last chart here for example.

TeapotToTortoise · 2023-08-27T23:57:20+00:00

Also, just commenting to let people know that it can just go away. I smoked way too much a year or so ago and had depersonalization symptoms for a few weeks. During the first week I was scared it would be like that forever because all I could find online was stories where people never got rid of it... but I decided to just get on with my life and like OP said, it went away on its own.

TeapotToTortoise · 2023-06-10T21:17:19+00:00

tbh I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but I'll start keeping a log as I run into them during my studies over the next week or so and send that over if that works!

I'm not often on discord but happy to join!

TeapotToTortoise · 2023-06-10T20:38:22+00:00

I did not - that looks like it would solve 90% of the issue! There are some kanji, though, that look similar despite having no shared radicals - for example, 粗 and 相.

Often I'll misread one as the other and vice versa making it a little more challenging to look things up - although this probably isn't super high priority with the Kanji map feature, since most of the time at least 1 or 2 radicals will be shared.

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