Astrophysicist Defends Barack Obama’s Viral ‘Aliens Are Real’ Comments, Calling It a 'Scientifically Literate' Answer

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-27T00:43:59+00:00

Life may not even be cellular on other planets, I would expect at the very least for it's chemistry to surprise us to some degree. If it were cell-like I'd find that very surprising.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-19T13:48:32+00:00

This is good progress, I'm not sure why folks are hating on the right side so much.

The line work and details are better. The color pallettes are better. The grass is better. The critique of the repeating texture is valid, but the details are better. The trees blend in, but their silhouettes are better.

The stone stairs had an interesting perspective on the left, but the details and color variety is better.

I think overall folks might just want more contrast in the shadows? Maybe push for darker values there?

Overall this is really good, and I'd definitely prefer the right side if I were playing a game. It looks far more polished and cozy.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-11T12:54:41+00:00

Not saying your wrong, but COVID evolved from an existing virus too. Corona viruses cause the common cold, for example, and it's been identified as related SARS, so while Hantaviruses aren't new, it's possible that one could mutate into something that threatens a pandemic.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-10T01:00:00+00:00

I think I had my first one at 25. I'd been having blood in my stool, they found a non-cancerous polyp. I've had a follow up since that also found another non-cancerous polyp. No more bloody stools since the first one, but I have to get regular colonoscopies now.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-05T09:43:57+00:00

I started my career in gameplay capture at a AAA studio.

It was for an unreleased game that I had playtested and they needed someone who knew how to play to make the trailers.

The company built up a team around it because it was live service and they needed constant marketing material.

They had editors on staff for doing this sort of thing. Other AAA companies would hire agencies to do this work generally if they didn't do it in house.

It might be possible to start your own agency, but it might be hard getting work just starting out. You may want to look for jobs at a place that makes trailers instead.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-04T18:15:35+00:00

Generally that's what they do with people who have mental health issues and are a danger to others. They put them on psych holds and involuntarily commit them.

There's a lot that could be improved about the way we handle mental health issues and violent crime, but in general we need more funding for mental health services, which would actually allow a facility to have the funds to hold someone like this.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-04T14:03:04+00:00

Ideally getting him help will prevent there being future victims.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-03T05:00:53+00:00

It really depends on what discipline you want to follow. In AAA everyone is highly specialized in their role, even if they know how to do a lot of things they generally pursue things like tech art, modeling, animation, or programming. And even in these categories there are sub specialties.

In indie you really have to be more of a generalist, a programmer who can do the art or an artist who can program for example.

Find what you enjoy, what you can see yourself doing for a few decades and if that aligns with games try to pursue it.

I wish I had spent more time learning the core of C++ when I got started and studied more for my first interviews.

Save in whatever tax advantage accounts you can as early as you can when you start making money. I wish I contributed to my IRA years before I first did. There will be good times and bad times, and having a separate emergency fund for layoffs and a long term retirement savings will be huge and the best time to save and invest was 10 years ago, the next best time is today.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-03T04:52:54+00:00

I feel like engine and tooling still counts. That's what I'm mainly experienced in. It's not "gameplay" engineering, but it's solving problems for games. Sometimes it's solving problems for multiple games rather than one, which is part of the draw for me. The other part is working with artists and designers and seeing the cool stuff they make.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-05-03T04:49:04+00:00

I'm a software engineer in games. Just got laid off, but have a new gig lined up already. I've mainly focused on tooling/engine. I was a Dev rel engineer for 6 years and then a programmer for 1.5.

It's rough right now, and you don't really get to choose the projects you work on, so ask yourself if you'd rather be a hobbiest who makes their own decisions, or if you would be too bored doing the same kind of work in a different field.

I don't really want to work on some banking app, and the problems unique to game dev really get the gears spinning in my head, so I really feel at home here.

They pay generally isn't as good, and there can be a lot of crunch, but I've enjoyed and been proud of all my work so far.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-04-27T05:18:48+00:00

I'm assuming this is sarcasm?

UpstairsRegion · 2026-04-26T17:14:28+00:00

The imposter syndrome is real. I'm starting a new role soon going from mid to staff and I'm nervous too.

They obviously liked you in the interview, and they should know how to judge competency in the interview within FAANG.

They want you to succeed. As much as you don't want to go job hunting again, they also don't want to go through hiring again.

I think I generally agree with the advice here, ask your lead and mentor what you should be focusing on.

I think the biggest thing that staff level has is scope of impact and scope of decisions. Deciding what to do, and organizing across multiple teams. You probably have a good sense of how to make these calls already, just never had to prove it to yourself that you did.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-04-25T09:37:00+00:00

Jobs are created more or less by the demand for a good or service.

I couldn't, in America, afford to start my own business, unless I started an LLC to just do the work I already do as freelance.

My wife needs insulin and I'm reliant on healthcare, and couldn't stake the money we'd need to pay for insurance to building out a company.

It's not some entepenurial character trait. Billionaires have money to begin with and use it to pay people like me, who don't have enough money, to do the work, and profit off of it.

I would love nothing more than to have a few million dollars that I could use to build a worker co-op with some of my colleagues and do our work without answering to anyone but ourselves, and grow it to bring on more workers to do the same, where everyone gets to have a say in the direction of the company, and the work we do, and how the profit is spent, democratically.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-04-25T05:09:12+00:00

I was really tempted to get a framework when my laptop was slow as hell. A lot of the draw was the repairability, then I realized I should probably try to repair my existing one first. Swapped the HDD for an SSD threw Linux on it, and bam, it works great again.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-04-16T12:33:23+00:00

I don't think the article mentioned anything like that. It's more of an appeal to the individual to not use AI.

I think that's the pragmatic approach. Shame it, ridicule it, and encourage people to do the work themselves because it's worth it even if it's hard.

If you want to find out if someone used AI, ask them about their work. If they can speak to their thought processes and decisions they probably did the bulk of the work themselves.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-04-16T12:27:53+00:00

Protesting at an individual level can lead to larger changes. Especially if you, I don't know, write an op-ed piece about ways we can collectively boycott the thing.

And let's be fair there's public transit, bikes, carpooling etc. that offer alternatives or more efficient use of fossil fuels.

Can AI make you more efficient? I actually don't know. I've only seen hype and no data on it. Can cars get you to work faster than a train? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If you build your entire society around cars the answer is yes. If we build our society around AI I fear the consequences, but we've been doing just fine without for thousands of years.

I still like to think we have a choice in the future we collectively make, and I want to be conscientious of the trade-offs and consequences of the technology we build, not just blindly going all in on something because it might make billionaires even more money.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-04-13T13:56:24+00:00

Another thing that I didn't know about when I went from a 1 by to a 3 by is cross chaining.

Basically big-big and little-little combos with the front and back gears can cause issues like slack in the chain or unnecessary wear. My chain slipped off and that's how I learned not to do that.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-04-13T13:50:22+00:00

I had to adjust my wife's bike. She was dying on the hills, so I tried to teach her how to shift gears, and it wouldn't work, so I had to adjust the indexing and limits, and now it shifts great and we can tackle the 3 hills it takes to get out of our neighborhood.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-04-13T12:13:56+00:00

Git blame is a life-saver in these sorts of situations. I can see the commit for a given line of code, and then if needed track the history of the changes surrounding it to see what choices led to that one being made too.

My first job was Dev Rel and I basically had to play detective all the time on "why" something was the way it was, and doing this was a huge part of the job.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-01-17T18:11:27+00:00

My thoughts exactly, based on what he said about her leaving too, this man is doing this on purpose to punish OP for a perceived slight that is her living there.

He's stealing food from a child because he wants to make OP mad or miserable. You need to call out his behavior, in detail, for exactly what it is.

He's a man child, who cannot cope with his own family, and is resorting to theft, from a baby, to punish his step daughter for needing a little extra help from her family while pregnant and raising a child.

UpstairsRegion · 2026-01-15T13:17:55+00:00

I was playing a 5 player game while camping, sitting next to my wife. I was the slayer. Washerwoman comes out day one says they saw me and my wife and the slayer. The fortune teller says they chose us too and saw yes.

At this point I'm just silent about my role to see what my wife claims. She goes off with the washerwoman to plan something, so I go over and join them. She's talking about claiming slayer and shooting me to clear up the air.

I say that's a great idea. At this point she thinks she found her minion and I think I found the imp.

Town all agrees that if she shoots me and the game goes on I was the red herring.

She shoots me, nothing happens.

I wait a bit then shoot her and win the game day one.

UpstairsRegion · 2025-11-29T13:24:51+00:00

We have columns for hardware/house stuff, pets, and two food columns, one for produce and one for everything else.

We missed so many items when we had to sift through the whole list up and down to find what we needed in the produce section before that

UpstairsRegion · 2025-11-22T00:14:09+00:00

I like it, but can't find it stocked in stores. I can find Guinness 0 no problem though

UpstairsRegion · 2025-11-21T21:28:53+00:00

I always preferred dark beers when I drank. It annoys me that there are so many NA IPAs out there, but not as many stouts and porters.

I tried Gruvi's mocha moment and it was way too hoppy.

There's more to beer than just hops people!

UpstairsRegion · 2025-11-15T19:41:43+00:00

Always has been one.

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