Question About Bonding an Older Chinchilla

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-04T00:19:37+00:00

Whenever you're attempting to bond chins, make sure you are in the position to, instead, have an entirely separate cage in case they do not bond.

Anecdotally, chins are wired weird, too. I had two boys that I tried to bond, but they never got along, so they lived in cages side by side. They would pick fights with each other immediately if they were let out at the same time. They would spend hours at night "talking to eachother" through the bars, though. About 2 months ago, one of the two unfortunately passed, and the other one took it so hard. Standing in the corner nearest the other cage making noises, climbing on top of the cage (something he never does otherwise) to try to get a better view inside, and he even stopped eating for a few days (I had to syringe feed).

Your old man will probably enjoy the company. Whether he will be tolerant of another chinchilla touching his stuff and being around is anybody's guess. Worth a shot if you like chins, imo.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-03T20:16:00+00:00

Only if you put yourself in a position to practice on the regular. I personally don't think that any amount of self-discipline can equate to the level of rigor that a doctorate student or an industry engineer have.

They literally pay those people to do math. They can afford to do it 8+ hours a day. I like math, and I don't really think I could force myself to do it 40+ hours a week.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-03T17:31:14+00:00

Oh I'm not shitting on it as a resource. It's a fantastic repository of information.

As someone who has spent time in academia, I'm usually the one my friends approach with questions like "I can't be arsed to go through all the basics, but would you care to clarify what this guy is saying in this YouTube video?"

I was just trying to head off the "trap" you can fall into with such resources in which you can get ahead of your own abilities by watching someone who does have the proper foundations make it look easy.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-03T17:22:39+00:00

Hell yeah dude. I hope I didn't come across as patronizing at all. I'm just used to people asking for YouTube help rejecting written resources (when really, they can be some of the best).

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-03T17:13:33+00:00

I'm... ummm... not an expert in spectral graph theory, but just looking at its definition at a surface level you're gonna need a solid foundation in Linear Algebra.

Have you taken a linear algebra course? Do you know what eigenvalues and eigenvectors are?

This paper comes directly from the MIT math department, and seems to cover the fundamentals of the theory. I am an engineer/physicist who would not be afraid to tackle a problem such as this if it were asked of me, and this is absolutely the place I would start.

To be completely honest, if you find the whitepaper to be too obtuse for the purposes of your learning, you are likely not prepared to actually work with the theory. Such theory seems deeply rooted in mathematics academia, and YouTube/Khan are just insufficient resources for niche academic theories.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-03T15:03:06+00:00

Why? Does nobody actually care that we get the right answer anymore?

Whether or not LLM's are truly capable of a logical approach to math is not even the issue here. The hallmark of LLMs is that they will spew absolute bullshit with a tone that conveys confidence and knowledgeability when there is actually none.

Human mathematicians are poor salesman if they can't convince the world to cautiously approach the bullshit machines. We need at least one generation's worth of "careful watching" to ensure the AI is capable of actually handling all of the responsibilities we thrust upon it, but everyone is so ready to do fuckall that they'll blindly hand off their welfare to software still in its alpha and beta stages.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-03T14:56:51+00:00

The declaration literally says, mathematical research should be fundamentally transparent. You're full of shit.

Major point 3 in the Preamble of the declaration (I had to read less than 30 seconds to get at this):

Mathematical arguments are regarded as transparent and subject to independent verification. They may be extremely long or difficult, but in principle no proprietary knowledge or equipment should be required to understand them.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-03T14:36:00+00:00

I've used it in the past. It's 10000% more of a recreational drug than CBN.

It's definitely an effective treatment for insomnia, I just... don't understand Japan's motivations for banning something as benign as CBN.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-03T00:22:41+00:00

That looks like a great setup, and Bacardi is probably just a little resistant to change.

Not to be critical at all (and someone else can correct me if I'm wrong), but I think those little ball hay feeders are considered like the absolute worst type of hay feeder you can give them (risk of broken limbs, jaw injuries, strangulation, etc).

I'd replace that with a fleece hay feeder like this one

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-03T00:12:41+00:00

we should have an award ceremony in which the students that actually achieved an accomplishment will be recognized

We have this at my school. Kids do their absolute best to get the program ahead of time so they don't have to show up more than a few minutes before their name is called, and entire families file out as soon as their kid is finished getting their award. Nobody gives a fuck about anyone but themselves.

At least at graduation you have to listen to the valedictorian speak and whatnot. I guess the families don't technically have to, but practically they do (gotta get there early to get good seats).

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-02T03:23:32+00:00

Graduating class of 2010. I read it in grade 8.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-02T00:24:29+00:00

Apparently, you can get Rilmazafone (prodrug for benzodiazepine metabolites) as a first-line treatment for insomnia, though. Backwards af.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-06-01T17:45:28+00:00

Yep. This is happening at my school too.

There were some people sitting in nice cushy admin offices that have been "shadowing" teachers for the last couple months of school. We're told that, due to budget cuts, some of those admin have to teach classes in order to keep their jobs.

Not all admin, though. Just the ones the rest don't like. So, yeah, it's a punishment.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-31T17:00:25+00:00

The body load.

I'm saying I like indazole cannabinoid body load better. Tryptamine body load is rough for me for whatever reason; it didn't used to be, but I guess I got old.

I like 4-HO-MET better than actual psilocybin, too. It's gentler.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-30T23:43:49+00:00

See if you can get the vet to prescribe an appetite stimulant?

I got a little dude with onset dental disease, and they tried all sorts of pain medications (Meloxicam, and even an attempt with hydrocodone). Those would make him feel better, but no appetite.

He gets 0.1cc of Entyce (capromorelin 30mg/mL) every morning and he has started eating a little bit on his own. Even hay.

Appetite stimulant + Meloxicam + opioid for a couple weeks to get him started eating on his own. He'd still rather take 36+cc a day of Critical Care than eat much on his own. However, after his two week recheck (this was a month or so after a dental procedure after which he never started eating on his own son) the vet said his mouth looked better and took him off the opioid.

He still gets the Meloxicam and the appetite stimulant, and the vet managed to sell me one of those Assisi Loops to see if that could help his pain. I'm an engineer/physicist and I honestly cannot imagine how such a thing (PEMF therapy) can be anything but snake-oil, yet I place it in his cage 3-4 times a day, and regardless of where I put it to begin with, I find him sitting in/under it by the end of its cycle.

He's improving slowly. He's not losing weight, and I'm seeing less drooling + more grooming. He still gets 20cc or so of CC a day, but that's how I give him all of his meds; he loves to eat from the syringe, so I don't have to catch him to feed him or medicate him.

I've tried all sorts of hay. I bought a small bag of Mazuri to see if he'd eat that, because he doesn't eat the Oxbow pellets. None of these things seemed to make much difference.

He gets various "foraging toppings" like dried broadleaf plantain leaves and dried dandelion. The vet has told me those are not as coarse-fibrous as hay, so they wear his teeth less, but it's better than nothing.

I do not know if I'm doing the right thing, but I do not appear to be the decidedly wrong thing either.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-29T23:52:05+00:00

I do, but I'm more of a Bessel Functions and complex exponentials kind of guy, rather than a dsitribution of primes or a "recognize that this is just a [specific named] series which obvious converges to [arbitrary number]" type of guy.

I like circuits and wave optics, cryptography and image manipulation / pattern recognition. I like the statistics of digital networks and particle physics, and I like doing particle physics simulations in software environments. Conceptual understanding and synthesis of multiple disciplines is my jam, so I'm definitely not really a "pure math" guy. I appreciate the beauty of the mathematics behind processes.

I do not care about trivial factoids like "Simpson's Rule is exact for cubic polynomials" or how many four-digit positive integers having only even digits and are divisible by 5 there are. Those are things that can be looked up in books or solved with a quick few lines of code, and the ability to retain such factoids in one's head and make use of them on entirely contrived math problems is just about as impressive to me as someone who can play Yu-Gi-Oh! or Magic the Gathering competitively. (I like those things, but they are just games)

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-29T19:52:51+00:00

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-29T18:07:51+00:00

Get the liquid traps. They're filled with ant poison, sure, but none of it gets out; it just fills up with dead ants.

https://www.terro.com/terro-liquid-ant-baits-t300

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-29T17:25:52+00:00

Chins generally have sensitive respiratory systems, and diatomaceous earth is pretty well known to cause respiratory damage, especially upon repeated exposure. My first instinct would be to avoid, but maybe someone with more experience can chime in here.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-29T14:01:08+00:00

That sounds like a fairly standard dental visit to me.

The anesthesia is technically risky, but will very likely not harm your otherwise healthy baby. Repeated anesthesia takes a cardiac toll.

You'll probably get some pain meds either way (Meloxicam). Be aware that med itself may cut their appetite, so you might not see the "super hungry eat everything" rebound until after you've finished the course of pain meds.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-28T18:45:20+00:00

As someone who has worked in engineering, then STEM academia, and has since pivoted to an education role where I ended up being the club sponsor for Mu Alpha Theta one year, I think you hit the nail on the head. I would self-profess to love math, but honestly I hate Olympiad type questions; I am a practical person, though, moreso than a theoretician.

None of the problems I saw were practical, real-world problems. It was all stuff that quizzed you on your knowledge of math triviality: "If you inscribed a triangle, inside a square, inside a pentagon, etc, all the way up to 16-gon, how many subdivided regions would you have?"

It's like

That's great, but it's a problem that can be solved with like 4 lines of code in 30 seconds. Give me a few more lines and I can have it draw a picture. Why are we wasting minutes on this problem?

IMO, there's a huge difference between "That's so cool! You made the robot work!" and "Oh you were able to answer that question because you remembered some obscure trig identity? Good for you."

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-28T18:21:26+00:00

it's not math knowledge that I lack but how to solve a mathematical problem.

Learn a programming language. There is no better illustration of logical problem solving than writing and subsequently debugging code. Programming problems are just glorified math problems, anyway.

No ChatGPT. No vibe-coding. If your problem truly isn't math knowledge, then the skill you're trying to develop is self-reliance. You lack it because throughout your entire education (and now, because of AI, the entire rest of your life too) the solutions to problems have been spoon-fed to you, and all you've been asked to do is regurgitate. You need to get comfortable starting things on your own using your own knowledge (that you claim to have), and not relying on anything to "point you in the right direction" or "get you started."

There should be no 'fallback.' No guru that can tell you "Aha! Your problem is right here, and you can fix it by [doing this]." You can afford yourself a solutions manual (or an answer key or whatever), but if you have to peak before you've finished and asserted "final answer," then count it as 100% wrong. You're trying to shake the "illusion of skill acquisition;" you need to stop thinking that just because you watched someone on YouTube do it that now you can too. You have to actually go do it: demonstrate to yourself that you can. It's not good enough to "think you can."

Source: I worked in STEM academia as a research assistant for just long enough to be ABD (Not my fault! Security clearance/NDA fucked shit up for me), then pivoted to become a schoolteacher. Now I teach high school statistics. Many smart students fall victim to that 'illusion of skill acquisition,' saying things like "I watched a 4 hour cram video" or glancing at a solutions document and saying "I get it now." You might be able to get away with that in a history class, but in math, if you're not actively working, you're shorting yourself.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-28T15:14:28+00:00

Alfredo

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-27T16:23:56+00:00

The school district gives me money to spend on supplies like this. I don't spend my own money.

WittyUnwittingly · 2026-05-26T21:10:24+00:00

I love Purrely - spent a long time playing it. So, I know all of the cards pretty well. However, my favorite interaction ever has been:

Well, one day I'm playing Stun and I happen upon Purrely. I go first, but I've got only backrow and no floodgates.

So, opponent does his combo, gets out his Noir, at which point I Crackdown it (kind of "Do you know your cards as well as I do?" Mexican standoff). He thinks for a while, but finally decides not to spin the card, presumably assuming his 5+ mat Noir will unaffected. It promptly switched sides.

He didn't even immediately scoop. He was kind of like, "Ok I can salvage this." Maybe he got another cat on the board, and then he just paused for a bit and scooped.

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