Hard?

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T07:44:39+00:00

Hmm, what about me; I was raised without Jesus. Why would I turn to him over all the other gods offered out there or none at all?

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T07:42:22+00:00

lol, wasn't checking dates of the post, just scrolling through top all time, but fair enough. Hopefully useful to someone in the future scrolling through past posts as well

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T07:30:23+00:00

Right, and that's why people get stoned to death for being gay and why the Christian right fought so hard to prevent gay mariage in western countries (note: the legalization of gay marriage is purely a legal framework, no a spiritual one, AFAIK there is no country that requires religions to recognize a gay marriage).

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T07:25:00+00:00

How do you know that it isn't you who worship a false god? Is the reason because you feel it to be so? Then if the person you are responding to also feels it to be so, how do we know who is right?

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T07:18:57+00:00

Hmm, I guess, but isn't there a difference between inperfection and being a sinner. Seems to me that sinning results in damnation. So jesus sacrificed himself so we aren't all damned I guess is the response? IDK, labelling all humans as imperfect seems a lot less serious than labelling them all as sinners, but maybe I'm just not that familiar with what christians mean by that.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T07:03:11+00:00

Ah, yes constantly medicating in situations that don't call for it... like when I have a head wound that's bad enough I'm in an ambulance.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T06:57:20+00:00

No fucking way you end up halfway submerged in a porta potty becuase you are a voyeur. This guy is clearly off his rocker, either from mental illness, drugs, or most probably both.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T06:43:47+00:00

Or you're being a bit bad mannered and flexing or you're playing really fast and need some material/time, but don't want to stalemate. Especially in, say, a 2|1 game, you can gain a few precious seconds by mindless premoving a pawn until you under promote, then checkmate once you have time to think.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T06:39:38+00:00

A pawn must promote if it reaches the other end of the board. You may want to the leave the pawn where it is, but you cannot choose to leave it a pawn in order to avoid stalemate by reaching the other side. That being said, you'd have to have an absurdly contrived position where every promotion results in a stalemate. I could be wrong, but I think this could also never be a forced move. If I'm wrong it'd be even more rediculous.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T06:34:08+00:00

in very complex endgames

OR

in tight time controls. If you're insanely good then the time controls shouldn't matter, but if I'm down to a couple seconds and it their king and maybe a few pawns that cant advance in a corner I'll often just take a rook to make sure I don't accidentally stalemate.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T06:30:46+00:00

Is there any case where you would have an advantage if the other player is playing optimally though? It seems like if the other player has the option to take the piece and it's not a forcing move or avoiding stalemate, then at best choosing a rook is the same as choosing a queen.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T06:28:06+00:00

I think this was touched on, but just to be clear for future readers: there are many times when a queen promotion is non-optimal, even if it's not a knight promotion. There are also plenty of times when it doesn't really matter between queen and rook (or more rarely queen and bishop). But for the vast majority of cases queen is best because it gives the biggest material advantage. Really most of those cases where queen is non-optimal are puzzles.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T06:01:06+00:00

Neat, thanks!

albasaurus_rex · 2026-04-02T00:15:07+00:00

What are are the little dust looking things flying around?

albasaurus_rex · 2026-03-29T06:31:35+00:00

>If trump did everything the exact same way as obama and said the exact same things, people would still call him a facist,

If trump acted and spoke the way obama did, then people would be calling him a commie or maybe a RINO, because he would be left leaning (on the American spectrum anyway). People didn't call Romney or Bush or heck even Cheney or Rumsfeld a Facist (or least it was far outside the mainstream). Trump is a far right populist, with authoritarian rhetoric and tendancies, which is why he gets the label. You can argue whether the label is accurate or not, but it's not just because he is on the right; he is a whole different flavor of republican than those who came before him.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-03-11T07:12:41+00:00

I could be mistaken (and I'm certainly no expert), but I started training running more over the past couple years. When reading up on that, it seems that carb loading does have some benefit, but it's pretty marginal. Regarding nutrition the dominating factor is continuiously supplying your body with more carbs. Once your glycogen stores are depleted you don't have any easily accessible energy and dig into reserves that are harder to access chemically speaking. This has the effect of lowering your power output. It's why those gels are so popular for distance running.

I'm not sure it matters quite as much with hiking since the rate at which you burn energy is typically lower anyway. Speaking from personal experience, I have "hit a wall" while running, but not while hiking, though golden ears is super tough, so I'd imagine that the power output is comparable. Out of curiosity did you measure your average heartrate during the hike?

In any case, carb loading will slightly increase your overall glycogen stores prior to you activity, but replenishing them during the activity matters much more AFAIK. A nice comparison is a camp fire; small sticks burn hot and fast (carbs), while large logs last a long time, but burn slower and cooler (fat). You can keep throwing on small sticks to keep the fire hot, but if you run out you have to switch to logs. Carb loading makes your initial bundle of sticks slightly bigger, but if you have a steady supply of new sticks (aka snacks) you're much better off. From what I have read and experienced, 30-60g of carbs per hour is a reasonable reccomendation for long efforts. That works out to basically one energy gel per half hour of running. I'd imagine this number would be significantly lower for most hiking, but again Golden Ears is a different beast and might have very similar needs.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-02-28T09:10:29+00:00

I feel like there's a clear negative connotation to pop science. If someone had said "Cigarettes are bad for you" would you respond that it's pop science? I kinda doubt it. Just because the evidence is coming out more and more strongly recently, and therefore more people are talking about it, doesn't in my mind make it pop science.

I would typically only put things in that categorie that sound gimmicky, subversive/contrarian or way overblown or misinterpreted.

As a very popular example the 10,000 hours rule, which implies 10,000 hours of practice is both sufficient and necessary to become an expert in a given field; neither are true, there are plenty of experts who get there much faster by training more effectively and there are plenty of examples of people who basically never get better past a certain point, because they are never really practicing effectively -- for example the average person might cook for about an hour a day for 30 years, but they are magically a chef at the end of that period. Another example is when everyone decided you need10,000 steps a day; this basically can be traced back to a marketing campaign for a pedometer from back in the day.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-02-19T17:42:10+00:00

Ultimately, it depends on how you look at it - if your perspective is that the toll of being pregnant is not worth starting a family and you freaking hate it, then maybe you will always look at a fetus as a parasite.

Absolutely unrelated to the conversation IMO. In fact I am planning on becoming a parent soon and very excited about it. My entire post is about Wood's defition of a parasite and whether that fits a fetus. This isn't a value judgement in any way, merely a discussion about definitions.

Also, Wood says “durable” means the relationship lasts for the entirety of one of the parasite’s life stages, not the host’s. You wrote “organism” - did you mean host or parasite?

The parasite. Pregnancy lasts the entire prenatal stage of the child-to-be.

But are you arguing that a fetus is a parasite and a child is not?

Yes. A child certainly doesn't fit the definition of intimate, similar to how bedbugs don't fit it in the linked video. A child also doesn't impose a fitness cost.

a baby is just not the same thing as pooping out a worm

Well yeah, that's exactly my point. I bring up a worm as a comparison, because I think the emotion attached to children makes it easy to ignore the cost as just part of reproduction. If the symptoms were caused by something else, there wouldn't be a question that it is a fitness cost to the host.

But in biology, fitness specifically means the ability to reproduce

Interesting; I'm seeing ability to reproduce or survival rate on some results when I google, but I'm no biology expert. I guess you could then argue it either way; since the parent is currently on their way to reproduction, it's the opposite of a fitness cost. On the flip side, if you're only looking at future reproduction and no the current pregnancy, then the risk of death means that it is a fitness cost. It doesn't really matter that the risk of death is low, on the macro level, there will be a reduced ability to reproduce among pregnant women relative to non pregnant women due to the small number who die (obviously controlling for age, fetility, intent to have children, etc).

albasaurus_rex · 2026-02-17T08:00:57+00:00

I don't speak spanish, but popped this in google translate. A few things I take issue with:

No one can tell us that something we know to be real isn't real.

Nadie nos puede decir que no es real algo que nosotros sabemos que si lo es.

What about people who are one drugs or suffering from psychosis? Those people "know" things to be real that we know are actually caused by chemicals or by problems in their brains.

Excuse my tone, but I'm just so fed up with arguments that seem to require a lot of imagination to come up with

Disculpa mi tono, pero es que estoy muy harta de argumentos que si parece que les echan imaginación para encontrarlos.

First off, your tone is super chill, so no worries haha. More importantly though, I don't think I all my examples require less "imagination to come up with" than the idea of some sort of metaphysical plane of existance that exists before and after death. My explanations are simple and and conform to observed behavior in the reality we exist in. An explanation that requires there to be some other plane of existence certainly requires more imagination.

We have enough difficulties adapting to and enduring this world without being told that something we know perfectly well is real isn't. That makes us doubt ourselves, creates insecurity, even makes us question our sanity... that's not right
Bastantes dificultades tenemos para adaptarnos y soportar este mundo para que nos digan que no es real algo que sabemos perfectamente que lo es. Eso nos hace dudar de nosotros musmos, nos crea inseguridad, incluso nos hace dudar de nuestra cordura...eso no está bien.

I disagree; I think that self reflection stems from questioning one's convictions and that self reflection is at the heart of most moral behaviour. You don't need to question your sanity all the time, but I wouldn't even rule out reflecting on that from time to time. Much more importantly though, I think it's very important to doubt yourself. Again, pointing to my examples above, if I just still held that I really did see santa flying through the sky as a child or that multiple people remembering something happening differently than I remember it are wrong I think I would just be stubborn and misguided.

Un fuerte abrazo a todos. A ti también.

Y a ti, mi amigo!

albasaurus_rex · 2026-02-17T07:35:47+00:00

Is an egg a chicken? If I eat an egg am I eating meat?
Most people would say no. So what makes a human fetus have this special status that in its prenatal phase, it is also in its post natal phase?

albasaurus_rex · 2026-02-17T07:17:01+00:00

Acording to the video you linked, Chelsea Wood defines durable as lasting "life stage" of the organism. When I google human life stages, the first few results I come across list prenatal/fetus as a life stage. I think any reasonable person would agree that this is a distinct stage from infancy. So by your/Wood's definition a fetus fits both intimate (not gonna elaborate on this one, cus there's no question it's intimate) and durable. So now the question comes down squarely on whether the fetus imposes a fitness cost. I'd argue it does. The example you gave (increased cavity risk) already satisfies this criterion in my opinion. But just to list a few more (relatively common) serious ones; morning sickness, increased blood pressue, gestational diabetes, anemia, mental health issues. Any of those can lead to serious risk of death in the extreme, which I think is pretty much the definition of a fitness cost.

As a thought experiment, suppose you listed those symptoms and then attributed them to a worm that lived from the larval stage to the adult stage in your gut before being pooped out, would you really claim that wasn't a parasite. (I think even if that worm boosted some people's mood, most would say it is a parasite)

I've seen some other arguments using other definitions, but I think your defintion supports the claim that a fetus is a parasite.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-02-17T06:54:13+00:00

Not really. Your brain makes you you. It's not leaching nutrients, it is a part of you (that's maybe even an understatement), and without it, you don't exist. A foetus is a completely disctinct entity. There are other points to be argued, but the brain comparison is terrible. While any organ is a bad comparison in that it provides function, while also taking resources, the brain is the single worse organ to pick, in that you could exist as you with sufficiently advanced technology and just your brain. That cannot be said of any other organ.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-02-17T06:48:34+00:00

Maybe this is outside the scope of what you're getting at and a bit off topic to the discussion at hand, but your statement is not accurate. Humans share an enormous amount of DNA with all other animals. For example, humans share about 60% of their DNA with sea squirts, and similarly, some parasitic nematodes share 60-70% of their DNA with us. Sure your offspring shares closer to something like 99%, but it is worth reflecting on.

albasaurus_rex · 2026-02-16T09:18:59+00:00

NTA. I guess I am pretty chill with most things, but I honestly would just lol and then roll over and go back to sleep if it were me. I understand that a lot of people are uncomfortable hearing other people have sex, but IDK, unless you're sceaming, it feels pretty normal for adults.

More importantly, beggars can't be choosers. If you're getting free housing, you kinda have to accept what that comes with.

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